


just jump (i will catch you back)

by orphan_account



Category: P.S. I Love You (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 19:20:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13488111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	just jump (i will catch you back)

“Surprised you’re still alive,” she says meanly. She stops in front of him. Her arms are crossed over her chest. She stands at her fullest height, and she’s nowhere near as tiny as her sister was so long ago. “You know, if it wasn’t for your show, I’d have started combing the cemeteries. You haven’t returned a single call in eight years.”  
No, he hasn’t. It had hurt talking to Songhee, thinking about Roa, in the first few days after Roa’s funeral. He hasn’t spoken to Songhee since two weeks after the funeral when she’d stopped by to pick up the last of Roa’s artifacts that she wanted for herself. She’d been tearful, but Daniel had already cried it all out of him. He’d been quiet in his somber state, letting her walk out of his life without saying a word. He couldn’t bring himself to really care.  
He had spent a year or two or maybe three holed up in their old apartment, living off cheap alcohol and even cheaper takeout food, staring at the bloodstains that hadn’t washed out of the yellowed wallpaper until the walls themselves had started to close in on him. He got to where he couldn’t breathe, where the smell of stale cigarettes made him vomit instead of remind him of Roa. He’d gone to that fateful concert in the park, and he’d met Minhyun, and he’d finally started putting himself back together, piece by piece.  
“Daniel, all those words I said to you—I’m sorry.”  
Daniel bites his lips together, because as much as he remembers all of the blood, he remembers those, too. He remembers how it might as well have been his fault, how he saw what was going on and didn’t stop it, how Songhee had been the only one brave enough to tell him as much. How, even today, he doesn’t think she was wrong.  
“I was mad. I was angry at the world, because she was gone, and I took it out on you, and I shouldn’t have. All that stuff I said to you—none of it was true. It wasn’t your fault.”  
It’s definitely not what she said eight years ago when everything was still fresh, when the dirt had yet to settle over Roa’s grave. Songhee had sounded much more sincere back then. Daniel had an easier time believing her, too. Her words today sound rehearsed, like she has spent the time missing between them preparing herself for this very moment.  
Daniel thinks of Roa, and he thinks of that awful shoebox apartment, and he thinks there really are some things better left alone in the past.  
So he nods curtly to her. He’s got nothing to say, really, to the woman who looks so much like Roa that it hurts. He turns on his heel and stalks to the elevator. It opens by a mere struck of luck when he reaches it. He steps inside before anybody else can. He presses the button for the ground floor and immediately afterwards pushes the one to close the doors. The last glimpse he gets before the doors shut together is Songhee standing helpless, staring at him like it’s eight years ago again and he has just told her Roa is dead.  
He isn’t alone in the elevator, but he doesn’t pay any of the other passengers any mind as he leans against the nearest wall and stares up at the ceiling. If he tries hard enough, he can picture Roa looking back down at him, all angelic-like, with a face full of disappointment. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t need to be judged by a woman who has been dead for nearly a decade.  
“You look like you could do with some booze.”  
Daniel opens one eye, familiar with the voice but still needing to check twice just to make sure. His initial guess isn’t wrong. It is Jaehwan Tomlinson who has braved the silence of the elevator. He looks just as handsome and just as expensive as he did two and a half weeks ago at the charity auction. He smiles kindly at Daniel as if they’re old friends. He looks like the first rays of sunlight after a long and cold winter’s night. It makes Daniel go weak at his knees in a way nothing has done for him over since the other night in bed with Jihoon. He has to grip the bar behind his back to remain upright. He struggles to find his voice.  
“A quarter ‘til ten is a little too early for alcohol, isn’t it?”  
Jaehwan laughs, so carefree and weightless that Daniel stands up straighter at the sound of it, desperate to soak it all up for himself. It is so far off from the emptiness inside Daniel’s chest in the wake of Jihoon that he can’t help but to latch onto it. He drinks it in like a man starving for water.  
“Not when it’s served with coffee,” says Jaehwan without missing a beat. “I think I know just the place, if you’re interested.”  
Daniel hesitates. He shouldn’t be interested, Jihoon’s face flashing into his mind. It feels unfair, somehow, that he’s still so caught up on Jihoon. His first instinct is to say no and to just go straight home to wallow all day long in his pitiful state. But Jaehwan’s face is open with hope in a way that Daniel isn’t used to, and Daniel doesn’t owe anything to Jihoon, not really.  
He is going to be skipping out on the rest of work, but that was his intention after Songhee anyway. He doesn’t want to field the questions that are bound to come his way. He is partially avoiding Seongwoo, as well. He isn’t sure whether Seongwoo even cares enough at this point to try to get a truth out of Daniel anymore. He isn’t sure he wants to know if Seongwoo doesn’t, so it is best if Daniel puts as much distance as possible between them for now until he’s certain he can handle the cold, hard truth.  
So Daniel agrees to Jaehwan’s proposition. He stops by the front desk to have the secretary there send a message to Jisung that he’s going to work from home for the rest of the day. Then he and Jaehwan are off on their way. Daniel normally hails a cab outside the building, but Jaehwan is one of those people who has his own personal car service. His vehicle is waiting on the curb just down the street from the station, so he leads Daniel to it.  
“Don’t look now, but there’s some paps across the street,” says Jaehwan, leaning down to speak low in Daniel’s ear.  
It’s so intimate that it makes Daniel shiver at the warm breath tickling his skin. He tries not to think of Jihoon, of how easily he himself could take Jihoon apart by doing the exact same thing, but he fails. Jihoon’s face flashes in his mind, and it’s only because Jaehwan’s got his hand on the small of Daniel’s back that Daniel doesn’t trip over his own feet.  
The driver gets out of the front seat of the black SUV to open the back door for them. Jaehwan lets Daniel climb in before him, and Daniel sits on the far side and looks through the dark tinted windows at the men with cameras at the café across the street. They’re shameless in their endeavor, and it’s not something Daniel’s unfamiliar with, but it’s odd at the same time to be in such a position without Minhyun somewhere nearby.  
Jaehwan takes Daniel to a fancy coffee shop in the heart of downtown, near one of the studio his family owns. The car pulls up right in front of the shop, and they’re inside before the car has a chance to drive off. Jaehwan is a regular here, apparently. The workers call him by name, and they give Daniel jealous glares every time they think Jaehwan isn’t looking, and it only takes Daniel about five minutes to realize exactly what he’d agreed to.  
“Is this a date?” he asks, leaning across the table to invade Jaehwan’s space so that he doesn’t have to scream it across the small dining area. He doesn’t want anybody else to overhear, not with the looks he has been getting. He tries not to think about how he’d once leaned over a table for Jihoon, too.  
Jaehwan smiles sheepishly, like it’d never been his intention to broach this subject. Or maybe not this soon into it, them without their coffees. It’s not like Daniel hasn’t already entertained the idea that it might be a date, but, in his experience, men like Jaehwan are never shy about what they want. Jaehwan has yet to stake his claim.  
“Was hoping to have some alcohol in you before I clarified that I was interested in dating you.”  
“Think I’m that kind of man?” asks Daniel, but he doesn’t feel offended. It’s impossible to when Jaehwan is looking at him like that—all wide-eyed and nervous and hopeful. He thinks of Jihoon again, and how Jihoon has never been the type to ever show his nervousness, not when he went down on Daniel the first time or even when he was laid bare before Daniel, ass in the air and vulnerable.  
“No, but I definitely am,” quips Jaehwan, grinning.  
Daniel laughs. The waiter comes to their table then to bring their drinks. His name plate reads Jesse. He sets Jaehwan’s drink down gently before him then all but throws Daniel’s at him, and Daniel thinks it’s amusing how passive aggressive this man is before him, like he views Daniel as a superior just for commandeering Jaehwan’s attention. In a completely vain way, Daniel likes it. He feels important and wanted like he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. He certainly never felt that way with Jihoon, and maybe that was their problem. Maybe they were too caught up in hating each other that he’d mistaken their animosity for intimacy.   
“So, do I have a shot?” asks Jaehwan after a beat. He speaks down into his coffee, but his eyes shoot up to meet Daniel’s. He sounds uncertain, and it’s not pretty on him. It’s certainly not a look Daniel ever expected from a man he once witnessed vomit all over the roots of a beautiful tree at the mayor’s residence.  
Daniel opens his mouth to answer. He thinks about Jihoon, about how the man still haunts him, about how the man is halfway across the world without a single care. His chest hurts. His lungs feel weak, like at any moment they could collapse under the memories of Jihoon and Daniel’ll just choke on his own breath.  
Jaehwan reads the hesitation on Daniel’s face. He reaches across the table, eyes full of concern and maybe a little pity. He places his hand on Daniel’s, just a gentle, comforting touch, and that’s all it takes for Daniel to crumble. Daniel draws in a shaky breath. He feels trembly all over. He really wants a drink right now—a true one that will burn away all of the emotions welling up in his chest, all of the hurt Jihoon’s left him with—not just a dash of whiskey in his morning coffee.  
“Hey, no hard feelings. I’m good for whatever you want. I don’t want to be an inconsiderate jackass or anything.”  
Daniel winces. It is true that his most vivid memory of Jaehwan is of him vomiting all over the mayor’s prized bonsai tree, but that drunken bastard is a thousand miles away from this moment right here: from the man worrying after Daniel’s broken heart. He thinks of meeting Jaehwan at the auction dinner and praying that he wouldn’t win the auction. Now, he’s not so sure he wouldn’t have preferred Jaehwan to win instead of Jihoon. It would have saved him a lot of heartache.  
“No, you’re not,” says Daniel softly, dropping his gaze to their hands on the table between them. “You’re not at all. I’m, uh—I’ve just, uh, come out of a rough relationship, I suppose you could say?”  
“I assumed as much,” says Jaehwan, squeezing Daniel’s hand tightly like he wants to hug him, but they’re not close enough for that. “But, seriously, however you want me, I’ll be happy. No pressure. Your call.”  
“So if I wanted this to be a date?”  
“I’d be delighted.”  
“If I didn’t?”  
“I’d be less delighted but fine with it all the same.”  
Daniel turns his hand over in Jaehwan’s, their palms flush against each other. His chest is still in knots, and he still feels like he is liable to choke over his own breath any moment, but here with his hand in Jaehwan’s, the ghost of Jihoon alive in his mind doesn’t feel nearly as daunting. He feels freer than he has since Jihoon left, and he wants to be selfish.  
“I think I want this to be a date.”  
Chapter 17  
Chapter Text  
Daniel has an expiration date. He spends all week thinking about it. He knows he should tell Jaehwan, but he doesn’t quite want to. Jaehwan takes him out to dinner every night, and he treats Daniel like he can’t bear to lose him, and it’s nice. It’s so nice, and Daniel thinks of Jihoon less and less by the passing day. He begins to think that he can survive this, that he can function without seeing Jihoon everywhere.

He begins to get hopeful.

Jaehwan plans a nice weekend for the two of them, and Daniel likes that he makes an effort to spoil him. He picks him up from the station on Friday afternoon. They go to Jaehwan’s home on the upper side of the city. It’s much nicer than the house Daniel owns, but Daniel feels like he belongs anyhow. It is a penthouse in one of the taller buildings in the city, and he can see practically the whole city through the window.

They spend the entire weekend there at Jaehwan’s. He orders in a fancy dinner from one of the five-star restaurants in town on Friday night and then again on Saturday and again on Sunday. It’s something that his name lets him do. The food is good every time. Daniel tries not to think about how Jihoon would’ve gone to the store and cooked meals that would have rivaled them, probably even bettered them.

It’s nice spending time with Jaehwan. They sit around and watch old movies, and they play board games when it’s too late of a night to sleep, and Daniel curls right up against Jaehwan in his expensive, plush bed, and he sleeps so, so good that he doesn’t want to ever leave it. So they don’t. Not on Saturday until it’s so late and they finally order dinner. Not on Sunday at all when Jaehwan orders the food then caters it right to the bedroom.

Daniel likes Jaehwan, plain and simple. He’s surprised about how much he likes him, and it doesn’t really hit him until early Monday morning when his cell phone rings, and it’s the car being sent to his house. He is lying in bed with Jaehwan, and his phone is on the bedside table, and Jaehwan’s the one who leans over to pluck it up. He glances at the screen, because it’s hard not to as he hands it over.

“Tell them to call it back. I’ll send my car for you,” he murmurs into Daniel’s ear, and they’ve not kissed yet, not properly, but Jaehwan’s lips graze across Daniel’s skin in the most intimate way.

“’S okay,” says Daniel. “I’ll just have them reroute the car here.”

“Nonsense. I’ve got to go into work anyway. I’ll ride in with you.”

“At a quarter after five in the morning?”

“I’ll meet you for lunch,” says Jaehwan.

It sounds like a plan for Daniel. He’s so enjoyed this weekend that he doesn’t want to let it go. He hasn’t thought about Jihoon, not a lot at least. Jihoon isn’t alive in the walls of Jaehwan’s penthouse, but he is at the station and at Daniel’s home. Daniel is scared to leave the sanctuary of Jaehwan’s place. He’s terrified of Jihoon’s ghost, even two weeks after he last touched the man’s skin.

Jaehwan feathers a final kiss just below Daniel’s ear. They climb out of bed together. The penthouse has two bathrooms, and the hot water heater has a tank that is large enough to sustain the showers at the same time. Jaehwan ushers Daniel into the ensuite bath. The room is huge, and the shower is fancy. Daniel stands underneath the spray for a long time. Jaehwan has a wide array of fancy soaps. Daniel chooses them at random, and he comes out of the shower feeling like a new man.

He doesn’t actually have any of his own clothes here. Jaehwan has laid out his own clothes for Daniel to wear. They’re expensive and obviously sophisticated, and they feel nice against Daniel’s skin when he pulls them on. He stares at himself in the mirror when he is dressed. The gray sweatshirt is flattering in all the right ways on his body, and the trousers fit well around his hips. He thinks he might look better in Jaehwan’s clothes than he does his own.

When Jaehwan walks into the room, towel hung low around his hips and wet hair curling up around his neck, he whistles appreciatively. Daniel glances over at him, and he’s grinning from ear-to-ear. He has a hungry look in his eyes. It makes Daniel feel hot all over, desired. He lowers his head. His gaze drifts down Jaehwan’s body, because it is easier to look at anything other than the desire in his eyes.

Jaehwan is not like Jihoon, not at all. He doesn’t have fire-truck red hair or a piercing in his eyebrow or a dirty smirk whenever he speaks to Daniel, and he doesn’t ever say anything to Daniel that is less than nice. He is a perfect gentleman. A loving partner. He is everything Daniel should be looking for, and Daniel is happy with him. He is, really, but the thing is, he isn’t Jihoon.

“Is everything okay?” asks Jaehwan, soft and sweet.

Daniel’s gaze snaps up to meet Jaehwan’s eyes. Daniel pushes all thoughts of Jihoon out of his mind, forces himself to ignore the way Jaehwan’s eyes don’t dance with endless mirth. He feels a spike of guilt right through his chest. Jihoon is a thousand of miles away, all the way on the other side of the fucking world, and Daniel shouldn’t give a shit about him. Jaehwan is here. He hasn’t left. Daniel shouldn’t care about Jihoon.

“Yep. All’s good,” says Daniel.

Even he can hear the flatness of his voice. Jaehwan nods, accepting his answer, but he bites his lips together all the same, like he knows Daniel is lying to him but also knows better than to chase the topic at such an early time of the morning. They’ve got to leave soon. Daniel rushes around to finish getting ready. Jaehwan dresses quickly and efficiently, and he doesn’t say a single thing about the way Daniel can’t quite bring himself to look at him for too long at a time.

Jaehwan’s car service is prompt, and Jaehwan himself is a true gentleman, opening the door and holding it as he lets Daniel inside the cab before him. They sit side-by-side. The windows are tinted. Daniel watches the still-sleeping city around them as the driver takes them down the streets that lead to the station. Jaehwan is pressed flush against Daniel’s side. Daniel has his hand lying in his lap, palm up. Jaehwan reaches over and places his hand on top of it, giving it a squeeze.

Daniel glances down at their hands together. He tries not to think about that last night in the restaurant with Jihoon when he had reached across the table for Jihoon’s hand, and he tries not to think about how Jihoon’s smile had looked, all soft in the candle light.

He forces himself to look up. It’s easier to forget about Jihoon when he is staring Jaehwan straight in the eyes. Jaehwan looks nice in the weak light of the early morning, golden in perfect two-second intervals from the glow of the street lights lining the sidewalks. Daniel thinks he could get used to this. He could get used to having company on the sleepy car rides downtown early in the mornings, and he could get used to thinking that Jaehwan looks nice—or he could, if he didn’t have an expiration date.

The car stops right in front of the building. Daniel is on time, for once. He goes to crawl out, but Jaehwan beats him to it, and he stands out on the sidewalk to help Daniel out, too. Daniel takes his hand. They stand there for a moment next to the car. The street isn’t busy at this time of a morning, and neither is the sidewalk.

Daniel shivers in his heavy winter jacket. Jaehwan steps closer to him and wraps his arms around Daniel. He is less cold now, but the early morning air is still icy around them. The frigid air burns in his lungs, and it comes back out in white puffs whenever he exhales. He hates this time of year. He is mentally counting the days until the weather warms up before he realizes that it won’t matter as much in a few weeks when he is in a brand new city that is farther south and is, therefore, not prone to such brutal winters.

“I had a wonderful weekend with you,” murmurs Jaehwan. He presses a kiss to Daniel’s forehead. It’s a wet affair, Jaehwan’s breath warm against Daniel’s skin. “I’m sad to see it end.”

“Me too,” says Daniel into Jaehwan’s neck. Standing here with Jaehwan, his face pressed into the crook of Jaehwan’s shoulder, Daniel feels safe from all of the bad things, even the errant thoughts in his head.

“I want to take you out tonight—on a proper date,” says Jaehwan. He pushes Daniel away from him a little so that they can look into each other’s eyes. Cold air rushes in the space between them. Nervousness tugs at the corners of Jaehwan’s lips, and Daniel is not sure why he is propositioning him now. His confusion must show on his face, because Jaehwan rushes to speak again. “I want that clichéd St. Valentine’s Day dinner with you. I’ve been thinking about it all weekend.”

St. Valentine’s Day. Daniel had completely lost track of the dates during his stay at Jaehwan’s. He had known the holiday was coming up. Of course, he had. It is February, after all, and the stores have been filled with heart-shaped candies since the day after Christmas. There is even been an obnoxious countdown clock posted in the studio to remind everybody of the upcoming lovers’ day. So, Daniel has had plenty of opportunities to realize that today is Valentine’s Day. He has just not taken any of them. He hasn’t wanted to take any of them, not in the wake of Jihoon.

“Roses, candles, wine, the whole shebang. I want that,” says Jaehwan.

It takes Daniel a moment to realize that he is still speaking. Daniel gets a flash of Jihoon’s face across the table from him, candlelight splashed across his face. Daniel’s chest knots up. He draws in a shaky breath. He squints his eyes shut and forces thoughts of Jihoon out of his mind.

“No candles,” he stutters out, looking at Jaehwan once more. He winces at how rough his voice sounds and then does it again when Jaehwan nods understandably without hesitation. Guilt churns in the pit of his stomach. He wonders what he has done to deserve a man like Jaehwan, always taking but never pushing.

“No candles,” repeats Jaehwan.

He leans forward to press his lips against Daniel’s, smiling the entire way. Jaehwan’s lips are chapped against Daniel’s, but Daniel doesn’t mind. He gives into the kiss as soon as it starts, and he goes weak at the knees at how sweetly Jaehwan kisses him. It’s over within a couple of seconds, and Jaehwan is leaning back again. Daniel chases him until he can’t anymore. He falls back onto his heels, and he’s not sure when he went up on his toes in the first place. Jaehwan is still smiling at him.

“I’ll be here when you get off work. Go wake up the city with that handsome face.”

Daniel is reluctant to separate from Jaehwan, but he knows he has to. He has a show to run. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he acknowledges that this is the beginning of the end for him at this station, and it excites him. He thinks about the first time he stepped foot into this place, how wide-eyed he’d been, tripping over his own feet in awe of everything. He’s still overwhelmed by this dream, sometimes, but he’s a seasoned veteran by now. He thinks of the job waiting for him at the parent station, and he wonders if he’ll ever feel the same wide-eyed excitement for that place.

He doubts it.

He may have arrived at the station on time, but he’ll still be considered late if he doesn’t head on up to the studio right now. He bids Jaehwan a final farewell, leaning forward to capture the man’s lips in a final, brisk kiss, before turning on his heel and stalking toward the building. When he reaches the doors, he glances over his shoulder, and Jaehwan is still there, standing next to his car, staring after Daniel with a fond smile on his face. Daniel’s chest fills with warmth. He raises his hand in a cheeky wave then disappears inside.

He has an expiration date, and he’ll tell Jaehwan about it tonight.

The studio is abuzz with sleepy chatter. Everything is covered in red and pink and hearts, and it’s so festive in here that it makes Daniel want to walk right back out. He tries not to think of Jihoon, but he does, because Jihoon might be across a fucking ocean, but he’s still has Daniel’s heart. Daniel really, really hates this holiday.

Daniel steals along the wall to the presenter’s chair and plops down into it. Both Sujeong and Baekho are already here. They’re still setting up. Daniel glances at the papers on the desk before him. They’ve got a typical show ahead of them, lead astray only by the St. Valentine’s holiday. The countdown clock above the camera reads one minute and eight seconds.

Baekho reaches into the drawer between his and Daniel’s seats. He pulls out the penguin crystal figurine Apeach. He starts to put it down in its usual spot next to Daniel’s nameplate, its absence last week taken for granted. Daniel’s heart leaps into his throat. It is like a mountaintop avalanche crashes over him. His blood runs cold. He reaches forward and grabs Baekho’s wrist, stopping the man. Their hands hover above the surface of the desk. Apeach the penguin dangles from Baekho’s fingers, and it gazes back at him, all in one piece and not broken at all like Daniel might’ve thought it would be.

Daniel wants to vomit. He swallows against the urge. He shakes his head, and he can’t look at the penguin anymore, so he squeezes his eyes shuts. It’s a mistake. He sees Jihoon’s face right there at the back of his eyelids, and he just wants to cry, because he hasn’t seen Jihoon this vividly the entire weekend, and he doesn’t want to now, either. 

When he opens his eyes, Baekho is staring wide-eyed at him, face full of confused pity. So is Sujeong when Daniel’s gaze flashes to her. He slowly lets go of Baekho’s wrist, loosens one finger at a time until he’s completely let go. His hand falls weightless to the table. He barely notices the impact of the drop, though it vibrates up his arm. He feels a thousand miles away from the studio, like he’s on that Korean beach from Minhyun’s picture with Jihoon’s smiling face bright and happy before Daniel’s own despair.

There is a movement out of the corner of his eye, and he looks that way, and it is Seongwoo, who is staring at him like Sujeong and Baekho are—like he is afraid Daniel might fall apart at any second. Or, rather, that he is watching Daniel fall apart right before his very eyes in this moment in time. It isn’t a pretty look on Seongwoo. Daniel hasn’t spoken to Seongwoo since last week, not since the elevator, and he doesn’t want to talk to him now. Doesn’t want to answer any questions of his psyche, because there isn’t a doubt in Daniel’s mind that Seongwoo wants to ask them. Perhaps the only reason he hasn’t yet broached the subject is because things are so broken between them still.

Daniel doesn’t like it at all. Seongwoo is his rock. He is his best friend. He is the only person Daniel has left in this city when the others jet off to be all beautiful in exotic locations Daniel will never set foot in himself. But Daniel doesn’t have Seongwoo this time. Not really. He hasn’t had him since that episode in the elevator last week when Seongwoo finally ballsed up and told Daniel the truth: that Daniel is nothing more than the opinion of his viewers.

It had hurt to hear then, and it hurts to think now, even as the countdown clock passes ten seconds. He looks away from Seongwoo, because it hurts to see him looking at Daniel like this—like Daniel is fragile. Daniel is not fragile. He’s just not. He is a grown-ass man who can function like a proper adult without needing somebody to look over his shoulder.

He forces himself to focus on the camera before him. He takes a deep, centering breath, and he puts everything out of his mind, and then the cameras are actually rolling. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His mind is entirely void of words. There is a long second of silence, and Daniel feels like a ball of yarn in the process of unraveling. He can’t speak. He can’t think. No matter how hard he tries, he still sees Jihoon. 

Baekho does the lead-in for him. It’s best that he does, really, because Daniel isn’t sure he’d be able to get his voice under control. It’s hard to function around the ghost of Jihoon saturating every fiber of his being, every inch of his soul. Baekho reads straight from the teleprompter, but he makes it look like he’s doing it on his own. He’s a natural at it, and Daniel wonders if Baekho’ll be his successor.

There is a pause in the segment that connects the opening to the weather, and Sujeong rallies the cameras to pan around the station to capture the extend of the holiday decorations, and she jokes that they’re going to shut down their television show to open up a St. Valentine’s Day shop instead. Baekho’s bark of laughter is louder than necessary. It’s right in Daniel’s ear, though, and it is enough to finally snap him out of his Jihoon-induced stupor. He takes the reins that are his. The rest of the show passes without hitch.

Daniel is out of the presenter’s chair the moment the cameras stop rolling. He doesn’t hang around to talk to anybody, but that is okay. Nobody really tries to stop him anyway, not even Seongwoo. His cell phone buzzes with a text message. It is in his pocket, and he digs it out as he steps into the empty elevator. The doors close as he swipes his finger to unlock his phone, and he leans back against the railing as he waits for the message to pop up on his screen.

When it does, it nearly brings him to his knees. It’s a knife right through his heart, and he grabs at the bar behind him to keep himself upright. All of the air leaves his lungs. It is a message from Minhyun. Daniel hasn’t heard from him since Minhyun sent that picture message the day after he left. Daniel has avoided every single one of his calls, and Minhyun hasn’t bothered to message him again until now.

Daniel wishes Minhyun hadn’t even bothered now, because it’s another picture. This time it is a picture of a photograph illuminated on Minhyun’s tablet. It is Daniel’s face pressed against Jaehwan’s on the tablet. It’s horrible quality on his cell phone screen, and Daniel can hardly see past the horizontal lines that are frozen in their rolls across the screen. But he knows it is him, and he knows it is Jaehwan, and he knows it was just taken a few hours ago. They’re standing in the dim light of early morning on the sidewalk in front of the station, and Daniel’s face is pressed into the crook of Jaehwan’s neck, but it’s not hidden from the camera. He looks tired. This much is obvious even though the awful quality that’s presented to him. He looks like a haunted man.

Minhyun’s face is in the picture message, too, all handsome and decked out for whatever runway he is getting ready to go on. He has his eyebrows raised high on his head, judging Daniel from ten thousand miles away. It’s not fair, really, that Minhyun has this much influence over Daniel that it makes him immediately feel a million times more guilty for ignoring his best friend. There’s so much space between the two of them, and it’s not all physical. He hasn’t told Minhyun about Jihoon, none of it. He hasn’t told Minhyun about his new job, either. He definitely hasn’t told Minhyun that he’s going to be saying goodbye to him within the next couple of weeks.

There is a caption with this picture, and it says looks like somebody had a good fuck last night. It’s so blunt that all Daniel can think is no, somebody didn’t. He doesn’t text Minhyun back to tell him that, to tell him that he and Jaehwan haven’t slept together. Then he’d have to explain exactly why he hasn’t put out for the hot, rich rockstar, and he’d have to talk about Jihoon, and that’s the last person he wants to ever talk about with Minhyun. It’s bad enough that he was stupid enough to fall in love with a bastard like Jihoon who can’t even stand him, but it’s even worse to admit this to the man who was Jihoon’s friend first.

Daniel is about to shut off the screen—because he has nothing to say to Minhyun, not really—when he spots it. Daniel’s entire world screeches to halt, and he still can’t breathe. His legs can’t support him anymore, not under the weight of this latest development. e slids He HeHe slides down the wall to the elevator floor, and he leans his head against the railing, and he can’t do anything else except stare at the corner of the picture where Jihoon is tiny in. Where Jihoon is happy in. Where Jihoon is seated on a plush couch with a glass of chardonnay tipped against his mouth. Where Jihoon is smiling even as he’s drinking and looking for all of the world like the name Daniel means absolutely nothing to him. 

It’s sobering in all the ways nothing else thus far has been. Daniel’s heart shatters in his chest, but he doesn’t feel the pain. Not like he did the first time he got a picture message from Minhyun. A numb sort of feeling spreads across his entire body. He stares at the perfect form of Jihoon seated on the couch, lips pressed against the rim of the wine glass, and he knows that it’s not a good idea to linger upon the image, but he can’t help it. Because this man, this stupid man, is carrying around with him Daniel’s heart, and Jihoon doesn’t care. He doesn’t fucking care.

The elevator lurches to a halt. Daniel stands in the precious second before the doors split open. He pockets his phone, tucks away all of the bad things so that he doesn’t have to look at Jihoon’s happiness any longer. He tries for a smile at the strangers waiting to get on the elevator as he steps onto the landing. He probably doesn’t do a very good job, but he doesn’t care. His world has yet to begin to turn again.

He still has a few hours left of work. He buries himself in all of his duties so that he doesn’t have to think about Jihoon or feel guilty that he is still ignoring Minhyun. Seongwoo doesn’t stop by at any point like he would have a couple of weeks ago, and it’s an absence that Daniel tells himself he doesn’t notice. He hasn’t gotten any better at lying to himself.

It is almost dark when he finally leaves the station. It is the middle of February, so it is only to be expected given the evening hour it is. Jaehwan had texted him twenty minutes ago saying he was on his way to come pick him up, and here he is. The same car that brought Daniel to work this morning is parked in front of the studio. It’s not a legal parking space at all, and there’s a police officer just across the street, but none of that matters the moment Jaehwan steps out of the car to pull Daniel into a hug then a brief kiss, just one long enough so that their lips brush together.

“Hope you don’t mind an early start to the evening,” murmurs Jaehwan right into Daniel’s ear. His breath puffs warm against his skin, and Daniel shivers against him, and he lets himself be pulled into the waiting car. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

Daniel hums in his throat, because it seems like the appropriate thing to do. It sounds like an agreement, like Daniel himself has thought of nothing except Jaehwan the entire day as well, but that is far from the truth. It is hard to think of somebody else when he can’t get the picture of Jihoon, happy and relaxed halfway across the world from him, out of his mind. It is hard to feel anything other than the dull ache of pain that Jihoon evokes in him. It is even harder still to forget how much the words I love you are burnt into his soul, the words he is glad he never spoke.

Jihoon saturates his every thoughts, and there is no room for Jaehwan in between them. Daniel feels guilty. He should be thinking about Jaehwan, because Jihoon has no right to trespass on his mind, not after what he did. Not after he left. Not after Daniel had to wake up alone, stinking of their sex and heart aching over a man who hates him.

It is Valentine’s Day, the so-called most romantic holiday of the entire year, and Daniel is going to spend it with Jaehwan, but the ghost of Jihoon hasn’t relented, and it’s here still now even as Daniel sits pressed against Jaehwan’s side.

The restaurant Jaehwan takes Daniel to is nothing short of fancy and expensive. It is the best in the city, and it is only thanks to his name that he even gets inside at all. Jaehwan gets out of the car first when it pulls up in front. There are cameras all around, not necessarily seeking him out but finding him anyway. He reaches back into the car to help Daniel out. Daniel takes the offer for what it is. Jaehwan pulls him close to his side, one arm thrown around his shoulders, and he guides him inside of the restaurant away from the flashing of the bulbs.

The maître d’ seats them instantly, calling Jaehwan nothing but Mr. Tomlinson. She knows Daniel’s name as well, probably watches his show given the mixture of familiarity and nervousness that rolls off her in waves. She is professional, though, and leaves them at their table as soon as they’re seated.

Jaehwan smiles at Daniel across the table from him. It is intimate. The lighting is low, and their table is private, and Jaehwan’s knees knock against Daniel’s underneath it. Daniel starts to smile back—starts to think that he can maybe do this, that he can focus his attention on Jaehwan and Jaehwan alone—but Jihoon’s face flashes into his mind like clockwork.

Daniel is thrown back in time to another restaurant, much less fancy than this one, when it was Jihoon himself who sat across from him, bathed in the soft candlelight. It is enough to steal the very breath from Daniel’s lungs even now. He grasps at edge of the table with both his hands to center himself in the present, but he can still feel himself slipping away to the past, away to a time when he thought that maybe, just maybe, he and Jihoon had a shot together. That Jihoon didn’t hate him after all. That he wasn’t being stupid falling in love with a man like Jihoon.

He is on the verge of hysterics. He closes his eyes when they start to water. Every single nerve in his body is on fire. A cold sweat breaks out across his forehead. It is so much to feel at one time, and Jihoon is right there in the back of his eyelids, smiling softly across the fabricated table at him. Daniel struggles to breathe, struggles to remember how to draw air into his oxygen-starving lungs.

Jaehwan’s knee knocks against Daniel’s underneath the table once more, and Daniel’s eyes snap open, Jihoon fading from his mind to be replaced with the sights and the sounds of the restaurant around him. Everything lurches forward, like time itself is trying to catch up. Jaehwan’s eyes are big and so full of concern. He reaches across the table for Daniel’s hand. Daniel looks down at Jaehwan’s upturned palm, and he tries not to see Jihoon, tries not to think about when it was Jihoon’s hand Daniel held on top of the table.

“Are you okay?” asks Jaehwan, and it’s clear from the tone of his voice that he knows Daniel isn’t. It’s a peculiar mix of confusion and concern. His grip is tight whenever Daniel lays his hand on top of Jaehwan’s. He waits until Daniel raises his gaze to meet his eyes. “Hey, we don’t have to stay here if you’re uncomfortable. We can go somewhere else. I just wanted to treat you. This is the best restaurant in the city.”

“No—no, it’s fine,” says Daniel. He’s proud that his voice doesn’t tremble, even when he’s holding Jaehwan’s hand with a death grip. “I’m just—I dunno. It’s just been a rough day. A rough few days, I guess.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

That is the last thing Daniel wants to do, so he shakes his head. Jaehwan nods, unsurprised. He draws circles on the back of Daniel’s hand with his thumb. He bites down on his bottom lip, as if caught in between the desire to say something and the uncertainty of whether he should speak up. In the end, the desire wins out.

“He really fucked you up, didn’t he?”

Daniel’s world screeches to a halt once more, and Jihoon is right back with him, only this time he is juxtaposed against Jaehwan. Everything else fades from his consciousness. It is just Jaehwan sitting across the table from him, eyes full of worry, and he chewing on his bottom lip like he is genuinely sorry he has even had to say anything at all. It is just the ghost of Jihoon overlapping everything, looking devilishly handsome even to Daniel’s mind’s eye.

The two pictures don’t belong together, and Daniel has the urge to scream. To yell and thrash around until somebody calls an ambulance, and they come to take him away to the hospital and pump him full of drugs so that he doesn’t have to feel all of the conflicting emotions that are strumming through his body. So that he doesn’t have to remember what Jihoon looks like when he comes or how Jihoon’s lips taste pressed against his own or even how it feels, his body pressed flush to Jihoon with nothing—not even clothes—separating them.

It is all made worse because Daniel shouldn’t be thinking about Jihoon, not now on Valentine’s Day while he is on a date with another man. Jihoon left him. He got what he wanted out of Daniel. He made Daniel fall in love with him. Then he left. Daniel owes him nothing, and Daniel doesn’t deserve to be haunted by him, and Jaehwan shouldn’t have to ask this question. He shouldn’t have to inquire after Jihoon at all, because Jihoon is not supposed to mean anything to him. Not anymore. Not since he left in the dead of night and Daniel woke up all alone in cold sheets.

Jaehwan doesn’t really need an answer, but Daniel nods anyway. It is a belated type of response, and it is obvious that Daniel doesn’t want to talk about it. That he can’t talk about it. Jaehwan squeezes Daniel’s hand once more, and he smiles sadly at Daniel like he pities him, and he changes the subject.

“I think I’d recommend the trout.”

It’s easier from here on out. Daniel does in fact order the trout when prompted, and he and Jaehwan split a nice bottle of white wine, because Jaehwan recommends that, too. It’s not that Jihoon really leaves his mind—Daniel doubts that’s even a possibility anymore—but Jaehwan tells good stories. He is engaging and funny, and he is enough of a distraction that Daniel can focus on something that isn’t the ghost of Jihoon haunting him.

Jaehwan turns down dessert when offered, and so does Daniel. He is so stuffed from the main course that he can’t imagine even eating another bite. They’ve finished the wine between them, and Daniel feels a little light headed in all of the good ways whenever he stands up from the table after Jaehwan takes care of the bill. Jaehwan places his hand in the small of Daniel’s back, and he guides Daniel out of the restaurant, sticking as close as possible. Daniel is thankful. He doesn’t trust himself not to trip over his own feet, especially when they step out onto the sidewalk outside, and the cameras are there again, flashing in their faces. He leans closer to Jaehwan on drunken instinct, and Jaehwan curls around him appropriately. He uses his body as Daniel’s personal shield until they’re safe in the car.

The wine has done wonders to dull the ghost of Jihoon in Daniel’s mind. It’s also spread a nice pink flush all over Daniel’s skin that surely all of the cameras have captured in crystal clear photographs. Daniel can’t bring himself to care, not now while he is in the back of the car with Jaehwan secluded away from the rest of the world. It’s easier to push away Jihoon when the wine makes Daniel feel warm inside, and he snuggles against Jaehwan in the plush leather seats as the car speeds down the city streets.

He has his face pressed into the crook of Jaehwan’s neck, and he mouths at the skin there, and he doesn’t think about Jihoon. Not really. All he thinks about is the way Jaehwan trembles accordingly against the hot touch of Daniel’s tongue and how much Daniel really, really wants to wash away all memory of Jihoon from his skin in a way he has not yet managed to do, no matter how many showers he has taken. No matter how many times he has scrubbed his skin raw. Jihoon is still there, but he is less so when Jaehwan grabs Daniel under his chin and pulls him in for a deep kiss.

They kiss lazily all the way back to Jaehwan’s penthouse. Daniel is half-hard in his trousers, and Jaehwan is, too, but there is no glory in getting off in a rush in the backseat when there is a nice soft bed waiting on them just minutes away. The car lets them out right in front as always. Jaehwan pulls away from Daniel long enough to get them out of the vehicle and lead them inside. Daniel crowds into Jaehwan the entire way up to the penthouse, eager to leave the ghost of Jihoon alone in the tainted city they close off once the door to Jaehwan’s place shuts firmly behind them.

Daniel pushes Jaehwan up against the door once it’s closed, and he attacks the man’s lips with a fervor he hasn’t felt since Jihoon left, and he likes that he is feeling it again now without the man who hates him. Jaehwan responds eagerly, biting at Daniel’s bottom lip. He takes charge much earlier than Daniel expects, and they leave a trail of clothes on their way to Jaehwan’s bedroom.

Jaehwan pushes Daniel onto the bed, and Daniel hits it, bouncing up once until he settles into place. Then Jaehwan is right there, crowding into him, and Daniel can’t get enough. He runs his hands all over Jaehwan’s body. He has to touch every inch, has to commit this to memory. The more he explores, the less he’ll have to remember of Jihoon, and that is really all Daniel wants right now. He just wants the ghost of Jihoon to leave him alone, and Jihoon can’t haunt him when Daniel has the marks of another man on his skin.

Daniel breaks away from Jaehwan’s lips to trail kisses down Jaehwan’s throat. They turn into little nips, scrapes of his teeth against sensitive skin then gentle bites as he progresses lower. Jaehwan gasps at all of the right times. His hands make their way into Daniel’s hair, fingers curling around his scalp, not guiding but merely resting there. When Daniel reaches Jaehwan’s cock, he takes it in his mouth without any fanfare. He is desperate for it, desperate for their impending release, desperate to get Jihoon off his skin.

He pulls out every trick he knows, learning Jaehwan in a quick round of trial and error until he finds his stride. It doesn’t take much to bring Jaehwan to the brink of orgasm. He has been hard as long as Daniel has been, probably since they stepped foot inside of the penthouse. Daniel teases him a little, sucking and licking until Jaehwan is nothing more than a muttering mess. Nothing more than the mantra of Daniel Daniel Daniel over and over again.

Then he draws back.

“I want—”

“Yes,” gasps out Jaehwan, eyes wide and pupils blown. He doesn’t even need Daniel to finish his statement. They’re so in-tuned to one another, both in similar states of overwhelming arousal. He fumbles around in the drawer to the bedside table next to him, and he produces a bottle of lube and a condom, and he throws them at Daniel, spreading his legs. Inviting him in.

He looks good like this, in the midst of being completely debauched. Daniel tries not to think about Jihoon in this very same position, tries not to think about how he’d taken his sweet time to get Jihoon to this point, tries not to think about why he’s not doing the same with Jaehwan.

Daniel ducks down for another kiss as he prepares Jaehwan. He doesn’t think about how he’d gone about preparing Jihoon in a different way, about how much more intimate the entire process had felt. Daniel is in a frenzy this time. He doesn’t have the entire night. He needs Jihoon off his skin, out of his soul. He needs to be inside of Jaehwan right now.

He wipes his fingers against the bed sheet, and he uses his teeth to rip off the wrapper to the condom. He rolls it on in one swift movement. He slicks up his cock before he presses it to Jaehwan’s entrance. He waits there for a long second, gaze held with Jaehwan until Jaehwan grabs him by his shoulder and drags him down for another kiss. Daniel pushes in, and he goes slow—so, so slow—until he can’t anymore. He waits there, and he kisses Jaehwan until it’s time to move, until Jaehwan is adjusted to him, and he pushes away any thoughts of how it felt to be inside Jihoon.

Daniel draws back slowly then pushes forward again, and he stays with this pace until Jaehwan is writhing underneath him. The ghost of Jihoon appears then, right there with Daniel’s eyes wide open, and Daniel can’t handle it, can’t handle remembering how devastatingly beautiful Jihoon had looked underneath him, so he falls forward, and he kisses Jaehwan again, and his thrusts become erratic.

They build to an orgasm like that. Daniel wraps his hand around Jaehwan’s cock. It is leaking with precome. Daniel’s hand is still slick from the lube, and he jerks Jaehwan off in time with his thrusts. Jaehwan groans into their kiss. It’s one then two then finally three thrusts before Jaehwan is coming, spurting onto his and Daniel’s chests. He throws his head back, exposing his neck. Daniel gets a glimpse of Jihoon again—hears the desperately overwhelming noise ripped from Jihoon’s throat from his second orgasm in Daniel’s memory of that beautiful but awful night—then Daniel coming in real time, spilling into the condom.

Daniel falls forward onto Jaehwan again, his head against Jaehwan’s chest, and he tries not to picture Jihoon. But he fails, and he wants to cry. He’s too worn out to, though, so he just lies on top of Jaehwan and pants until he regains enough control over his body to pull out of Jaehwan and deposit the used condom in the trash can.

Jaehwan is cuddly after his orgasm. He pulls Daniel to him the moment Daniel is in reach, and Daniel lets himself be tugged back onto the bed. Jaehwan spoons up against him, his soft cock nestled against Daniel’s butt and his breath hot against his ear. Laying here, surrounded by Jaehwan in the aftermath of their sex, Daniel feels safe, and the ghost of Jihoon has abated. For now.

It’s too hot to sleep with proper covers, and they’re pressed so closely to each other that they’re nearly sweating with each other’s body heat anyway, but they have a sheet pulled up to their hips. Jaehwan places one last sleepy kiss against Daniel’s jaw, the only part he can reach. Daniel snuggles farther back into Jaehwan’s hold, and he sleepily thinks that he’d like to do this against with Jaehwan in a few hours, maybe, before he has to go to work. They drift off to sleep sometime later, Jaehwan’s breathing evening off just before Daniel’s does.

In the morning when Daniel wakes up, it’s to his cell phone ringing in the folds of the trousers he’d abandoned the night before. Jaehwan is still wrapped around him, hardly bothered by the ringtone interrupting the serene silence of the early morning. Daniel slips from Jaehwan’s hold, and he falls to the floor on all fours, crawling over to the trousers. He’d rather not wake Jaehwan up, so he accepts the call without bothering to look at the screen. He puts it to his ear. His world skids to a dead halt at the sound of the voice on the other side of the line.

“Are you fucking in love with him?”

It’s Jihoon, because of course it’s Jihoon. It’s always Jihoon, even when he’s gone. But he’s not gone now, and he’s not merely a ghost in Daniel’s life, haunting him. He’s real, and he’s drunk, and he’s crying on the other end of the line. Daniel feels like the entire world is crashing down around him. All that is really left are him and Jihoon at opposite ends of the battlefield. Just like always.

“Is he a better fuck than me, is that it?”

No, thinks Daniel, and it’s only through the mercy of an unseen deity that he doesn’t say it out loud. That he doesn’t bow to Jihoon. That he doesn’t absolutely, utterly fall apart at the sound of Jihoon’s voice after all of this time. Red, hot anger boils in Daniel’s stomach, and it’s a familiar emotion in regard to Jihoon. It sobers him in all the ways that even time itself couldn’t.

“You were the one who fucking left,” he snaps, voice halfway a whisper in deference for the man still sleeping in the bed just feet away. It isn’t really an answer to Jihoon’s question, either of them, but he can’t bring himself to acknowledge them. “You’re drunk now, and you’re fucking calling me like I’m nothing more than a damn booty call to you, and I can’t be that. So go fucking sober up, and find Min , and talk your shit out or whatever.”

Jihoon hiccups, drunkenly, and there is a pause in the sound that is coming across the line, and Daniel suspects that is because Jihoon is taking a large gulp of liquor. Daniel’s anger burns even brighter in the silence. He thinks about how expensive this drunken phone call is and how much he’s already given to Jihoon. He can’t do this anymore.

“What fucking right do you have calling me?” he demands, much louder than the first time he spoke. He is so fixated on the fact that he hasn’t talked to Jihoon since the night they had sex—that he has spent the past two weeks haunted by this fucking man who has been having the time of his damn life halfway across the world—that he can’t help but to repeat himself. “You’re the one who fucking left me.”

“I love you!” shrieks Jihoon, loud and drunk into the line. “I fucking love you, but you’d never give me a damn reason to stay! I had to leave!”

There’s a rustling sound over the line, and it’s followed by a click, and Daniel knows just by the sudden silence that Jihoon is gone. Daniel sits on the floor with the phone still pressed to his ear, and he doesn’t quite know what to do. He can’t think of anything beyond the words I love you.

When he looks up, Jaehwan is sitting up in bed staring back at him. It is obvious by the way the faint light dances across Jaehwan’s face that he has heard the entire conversation. He is wearing that odd expression again, the one that is a mixture of pity and sadness. The both of them are quiet for a moment, and tension builds between them like a crescendo until Jaehwan finally breaks the silence.

“Yeah, he really fucked you up bad.”

Chapter 18  
Chapter Text  
Daniel catches a cab to the station, unwilling to accept Jaehwan’s offer to have a car drive him to work. It is nice of Jaehwan, but Daniel has no right to accept it, not after Jihoon’s phone call. He also refuses it for a totally selfish reason. Jaehwan has been staring at him with that same odd mixed expression of pity and sadness, and it is all Daniel can do to keep himself from totally falling apart into thousands of tiny pieces that not even all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men from the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme could put him back together again.

So he slips into the clothes he’d worn to the station on Friday, as it’s the only set of his own clothes that he has at Jaehwan’s, and he makes his escape as soon as the cab pulls up outside Jaehwan’s penthouse apartment. The cab driver keeps glancing in the rear view mirror at Daniel like he recognizes him. Daniel hopes the man doesn’t feel the need to say anything. He isn’t in the mood to deal with anything this morning, not after Jihoon’s phone call has knocked him so askew. Not with the words I love you. I fucking love you, and you’d never give me a damn reason to stay. I had to leave cycling through his brain on an endless loop.

He pays the cab driver his fare before he gets out. He keeps his head down, face partially concealed by the collar of his winter jacket, against the paparazzi that linger outside of the station. They’re all probably hoping to get another glimpse of Jaehwan, and they holler at Daniel when they recognize him. They ask where Jaehwan is at, but Daniel doesn’t give them an answer. He dives into the safety of the station, the flashing bulbs of the cameras following him to the door.

The elevator is empty when he climbs inside. It is a short ride up to the studio floor, and he climbs out as soon as the doors split open. His heart beats in his chest to the rhythm of Jihoon’s words. He takes a deep, centering breath as he hesitates in the hallway outside of the studio. He isn’t entirely sure how he is going to carry an entire show with Jihoon’s voice playing on repeat in his head.

He doesn’t have the time to spare to pull himself together properly. He does the best he can do. He bites down on his bottom lip hard enough to make it hurt so that he has something else to think about other than the absolutely devastated tenor of Jihoon’s voice as he cried into the phone not even an hour ago. The distraction gets him all the way to the presenter’s chair without trouble.

Baekho and Sujeong are already set up. The countdown clock above the camera says they only have about fifteen seconds before the lights go down. Daniel has just enough time to accidentally spot Seongwoo hiding away in the back of the room before the cameras start to roll. He can’t see his face, not properly with all of the distance between them, but Daniel thinks he is wearing that same apprehensive expression on his face that he has been all week—thinks he is waiting with bated breath for Daniel to finish falling to pieces right here before them all.

Daniel doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Jihoon’s voice haunts him, and Seongwoo hasn’t been happy with him since the elevator incident, and Daniel could really, really use a friendly shoulder right now to just lean on, but he doesn’t have that. It’s pathetic, really, the state of Daniel’s life. He spends the entirety of the lead-in music feeling sorry for himself like he hasn’t done in a long, long time. Then he sucks it all up, forgets about Jihoon and Seongwoo and everything in between, and throws his all into the damn show.

Later, when the show is over, Jisung stops him just outside of the studio. Daniel is on his way to jump straight into his after show duties, because he can’t trust himself with a moment of peace. He has done a good job at ignoring the memory of Jihoon devastated on the phone this morning and at pretending like he hasn’t felt the weight of Seongwoo’s judgmental gaze for the entirety of the show. Now that he is free of his immediate obligations, he can feel everything start to creep back up on him.

Jisung drags Daniel out of everybody’s way to the end of the hallway opposite of the elevator. He crowds into Daniel’s space, and when Daniel takes a step back, he follows. His voice is quiet as he speaks, like he is reluctant for anybody else to hear.

“I spoke with Ed this morning. There’s been a change of plans.”

Daniel’s heart sinks in his chest. He is suddenly grateful that Jisung is still holding onto his elbow, or else he is afraid he might have sunk to the floor. Jisung’s statement doesn’t sound too promising. Daniel didn’t fully appreciate the out Ed had given him until right now. He is terrified to his very core that the change of plans in question are that he is no longer needed—that he is stuck forever in this city that is slowly suffocating him.

“He needs you to start Friday. Says there was a misunderstanding with the termination contract drawn up for your predecessor and that he doesn’t have anybody to even fill in the spot to give you a better notice.”

Daniel breathes a sigh relief before he processes the implication of Jisung’s news.

“Wait—this Friday? Jisung, it’s Tuesday.”

Jisung nods, biting his lips together. He looks somber, like he is aging ten years right before Daniel’s eyes. Daniel thinks about the day Jisung first told him about the job, about how he had wondered if Jisung was happy for him or sad that Jisung was losing him. He thinks now that maybe it was more of the latter than anything else.

“We’ll do a proper send-off for you on Thursday. Go home and pack up. The parent station will put you up for a few days until you can secure a place to live, and then you can have all of your things shipped to you.”

“So I’ve got, what? Seventy-two hours to pack up my entire life?”

“Forty-eight is more like it. You’ve got a flight out after the show on Thursday,” says Jisung. He pauses, eyes boring into Daniel’s. A moment of silence passes between them. “I’m sorry, Daniel.”

It sounds like he really is, and Daniel knows there is nothing Jisung can do about it. It isn’t Jisung’s fault. It isn’t even Ed’s fault. If Daniel had been acting like a proper, responsible adult, he might not be in a bind right now. He has known about his impending move for over a week, but he has done nothing to prepare himself for the future he knows is coming, such as search for a place to live or start packing away boxes. He has barely done anything more than just try to exist post-Jihoon. It has taken up most of his energy, and now he has the voice of Jihoon on repeat in his mind saying I love you over and over and over again, and Daniel is even less capable of functioning like an adult.

“Yeah,” says Daniel, mostly to himself, as Jisung walks off. “Me too.”

Daniel doesn’t move immediately. He stays in the alcove at the end of the hall, staring after Jisung. He has a thousand things to do between now and Thursday, and he is going to have to do every one of them to the soundtrack of Jihoon’s voice in his head. It was bad enough being haunted by the ghost of Jihoon. His voice, so real and so heart-breaking from just hours ago, ringing in his head is even worse.

Seongwoo emerges from the studio. He glances down the hall at Daniel, and he hesitates in the doorway. Daniel dares himself to meet Seongwoo’s eyes. He thinks about the last time they stood in this vicinity together, when they were standing in the opposite direction of this corridor and Seongwoo had finally told Daniel the awful truth. The words strike him again here now, his eyes locked with Seongwoo’s, but they are nothing compared to Jihoon in his head.

He wonders what Seongwoo knows. If he and Minhyun still talk about him even though he and Daniel aren’t on speaking terms. Seongwoo is not giving him any indication right now. He is not even making a move toward Daniel, which clues Daniel in on the fact that he has probably not spoken to Minhyun this morning or, maybe, that Minhyun is the one who hasn’t spoken to Jihoon.

Daniel thinks about telling Seongwoo now, about crossing the distance that shouldn’t separate them as best friends and pouring out his soul, bearing his heart that Jihoon has trampled all over. He wonders what Seongwoo would think. If Seongwoo would be surprised. Or if, possibly, Seongwoo has already suspected as much between Daniel and Jihoon, given their attitudes toward each other in the final week before Jihoon left.

It makes Daniel uncomfortable to equate Seongwoo with Jihoon, so he doesn’t move his spot at the opposite end of the hall. Seongwoo is supposed to be his best friend—his only ally left in the city when the rest of their friends have left them behind—but he isn’t now. Daniel is leaving the city in forty-eight hours, so Seongwoo doesn’t really matter anymore anyway.

As much as Daniel has an expiration date, so does everybody else he is associated with in this city.

The stairwell is behind him. He breaks eye contact with Seongwoo, spinning on his heel, and escapes down it. He doesn’t look over his shoulder to catch a final glimpse of his friend to ascertain what his reaction is. He takes the steps two at a time, leaning heavily on the railing to help him keep his balance. It works well for the first few flights. Adrenaline propels him right to the ground floor, and he is out of the station within minutes.

There are paparazzi outside like there was this morning. Daniel keeps his face hidden in the collar of his winter jacket as he hails a cab, and it is just his good luck that a car stops almost immediately. He starts to climb in it, even as the back passenger’s side door is being pushed open, but he catches himself at the last moment. It is Jaehwan climbing out of the vehicle. The car is not a taxi cab at all.

“Where are you off to in a hurry?” asks Jaehwan.

Daniel wavers, rocking his weight from the heels to the balls of his feet then back again. He glances down the city street to see if a taxi is nearby, but he is looking in the direction of the cameras, so he turns back around almost immediately. He has nothing else to do but meet Jaehwan’s eyes.

“Home,” he says finally, after a few seconds of silence that is broken only by the noise of the traffic on the street next to them. Then, because Jaehwan has seen Daniel at his worst at the mercy of Jihoon drunk on the phone, he dares himself to finally come clean like he should have when he agreed to go on a date with Jaehwan. “To pack. I’m, uh—I’ve been transferred to the parent station. Effective Friday.”

Jaehwan’s eyebrows shoot straight up his forehead.

“And you’ve known…?”

“Officially? Since the day I ran into you in the elevator and we went out for coffee.”

Jaehwan blinks deliberately, surprise transforming into something like betrayal right before Daniel’s eyes. He does nothing to conceal his reaction. Daniel feels guilty, like he has stolen all of the cookies from the jar instead of just one. He swallows against the urge to fall apart right here on the sidewalk in front of the station for the paparazzi and Jaehwan to witness.

“And you didn’t think to work that into a conversation? I mean, it’s not like you didn’t have plenty of opportunities to do so.”

“I know,” says Daniel, and he knows this is the end of them. It has been the end of them since he accepted that phone call this morning and Jihoon’s voice came across the line.

The thing is, Daniel can’t look at Jaehwan without seeing Jihoon now. Maybe he has never been able to not see Jihoon when he looks at Jaehwan, and he has just never noticed. Everything in Daniel’s entire life tracks back to the bastard of a man who confessed his love for him this very morning. He was a fool to think that Jaehwan was any different.

Even now as he’s staring straight into Jaehwan’s eyes, he doesn’t really see the man before him. All that he sees is Jihoon. All that he is ever going to see in this city is Jihoon.

“I’m sorry,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Are you, though?” challenges Jaehwan. His voice is much softer than his words, and there isn’t a bite to his tone like there probably should be. He sounds rather resigned, like he is finally accepting the man that Daniel is before him. The man that has been here the entire time.

The city street is busy behind him, and his car is parked illegally. There are dozens of cameras flashing their bulbs at them. Jaehwan stares at Daniel for a long time. Daniel tries not to fidget under his gaze. Never once does it occur to him that he should just leave, that he has no right to grace Jaehwan’s presence any longer, that Jihoon’s ghost isn’t scared of Jaehwan anymore.

In the end, it is Jaehwan who makes the next move. He steps forward to draw Daniel into a hug. Daniel resists for a second, but he is not a strong man, so weakened by Jihoon. He gives into it, and he buries his face into the crook of Jaehwan’s neck, like he likes so much. He soaks up the feeling of being held and being safe for this little bit, because he knows it is the last time.

“You can’t run away from love,” Jaehwan murmurs into his ear. Daniel hears him loud and clear above all of the city’s noise. “I think that’s what you’re trying to do, but you’re a foolish man, Daniel Kang.”

Daniel closes his eyes, his face still pressed against Jaehwan’s neck. He clings to Jaehwan like he hasn’t clung to anybody in a long time. He wishes right through his soul that it was Jaehwan with whom he had fallen in love and not Jihoon. In this very moment, he is tired of pretending like he can fall out of love with Jihoon in the city where Jihoon haunts him. It hasn’t worked in the two and a half weeks. It hasn’t even gotten any better. Daniel feels like he is half of a man, desperately longing to be completed. It is only made worse by Jihoon’s words echoing in his mind: I fucking love you.

Jaehwan doesn’t hold him very much longer. He takes a step back from Daniel, putting noticeable distance between them. Daniel shivers, though he doesn’t feel particularly cold with all of the layers of outwear he has on. Jaehwan gives Daniel one final look. He is chewing on his bottom lip, and it is so familiar to Daniel over the past couple of weeks that Daniel can’t help but to smile sadly.

“I really hope everything works out for you,” says Jaehwan, nice as ever even in the face of the sad end of their relationship. It is his turn to flash a sad smile at Daniel. “Take my car back to your house. It’s the least I can do.”

He doesn’t give Daniel a chance to respond. He walks off toward the station where the paparazzi immediately start to hound him. Daniel watches him go as he thinks about hailing a cab. He taken advantage of Jaehwan’s niceties too much over the past week, but the paparazzi start to turn one-by-one toward Daniel the exact second Jaehwan steps into the sanctuary of the station, and he needs to get out of here before they hound him, too.

Jaehwan’s driver doesn’t say anything to Daniel. He merely drives off as soon as the door is shut. Daniel is grateful for the man’s silence. He stares out the window as they go down the city streets, and he thinks about how this will be one of the last times he gets to do just this in this city. The ghost of Jihoon sits next to him, and Daniel’s mind is a mantra of I fucking love you. He sighs, leaning his head against the cold glass of the window. The ghost presses closer.

The car pulls up in front of his house, and Daniel thanks the man for the ride. He offers to pay his fare, but the driver waves him off. The man is as nice as Jaehwan. When the man drives off and Daniel walks up to his front door, Daniel can’t help but to think he doesn’t deserve all of the kindness that Jaehwan has brought to his life.

He shuts the door behind him, and he stands just inside of the entryway for a moment. The couch is a mess of covers. He hasn’t slept in his bed since the night he slept with Jihoon, and it is obvious by the heavy blanket that is spilling over the arm of the couch that he has barely dared to venture into his bedroom. He has a stack of boxes right here in his living room. It is the only responsible adult thing that Daniel managed to do in the past couple of weeks, and even it was an unsuccessful attempt to keep his mind off Jihoon when he ran out of things to do one afternoon at work. He is thankful for it now.

He takes a deep breath, tries not to think about all of the knickknacks he is going to have to carefully stow away into moving boxes, and starts to pack up his life.

It’s a monotonous task for the most part. He works in silence, finding comfort in the nothingness around him. He begins with the living room, because it is right here in front of him. The ghost of Jihoon sticks close to his side, and Daniel tries not to think about how the real Jihoon had made himself at home on Daniel’s couch. As Daniel organizes his living room into the boxes, he refuses to think about how the real Jihoon had not stopped at this room. He’d made himself at home in the entire place, saturated Daniel’s domicile with his every fiber of his being until it haunts Daniel even now.

It doesn’t take Daniel very long to pack up the things in his living room, though he takes the longest with the wall of pictures. He removes each one individually and tucks them carefully away so that they won’t be damaged in the move. They’re all that he is going to have left of his friends. They’re all that are ever going to exist of the people who mean so much to him here in the new city. He takes down the picture of Jihoon last. It is the hardest one to look at. The focus of the picture is a half-shot of Minhyun’s face, but Jihoon is there in the background, head thrown back in laughter in response to a joke that Daniel will never know. Daniel stares at it for entirely too long, until long after his heart starts to ache in his chest, before he tucks it among the others.

There is a lot he can’t do right now in the living room, so he does what he can and then he moves on to the kitchen, where the memories of Jihoon are still alive but less so than they would be in the bedroom. He is just pulling out the pots and pans he seldom uses from the cabinet next to the stove when he hears his front door open. He stops and climbs to his feet, curious to know who cares enough to stop by anymore.

“You fucking fucker, when the hell were you going to fucking tell me about you and—what the hell is this?!"

It’s Seongwoo. His voice reaches Daniel before he appears in the doorway to the kitchen. He is fuming, face red and fists clenched at his sides, but his anger is rapidly being replaced by confusion. He glances around at the boxes that are stacked everywhere. He purposefully looks at each individual one before he turns to Daniel, realization dawning upon him.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Daniel doesn’t really have an answer for him. He glances at the mess around them quickly before his gaze settles back on Seongwoo, and he thinks it should be plainly obvious what he is doing. People don’t just pack away their lives into moving boxes for the fun of it. He feels a flash of guilt at the look of utter betrayal that is gracing Seongwoo’s face. This is a shitty way of Seongwoo, one of Daniel’s best friends, finding out that Daniel is going to be gone from his life in under forty-eight hours.

“Don’t tell me this is what it looks like,” says Seongwoo. His voice cracks, and he stumbles forward to the center island in the kitchen. He grabs at the edge of the counter to hold himself up when his knees wobble beneath him. “Don’t you fucking tell me that my best friend is in the process of moving. Were you even going to let me know before you left? Or was I just going to walk into the station one day with Baekho sitting in your spot and Jisung saying that you’d skipped town on me?”

Daniel stays silent in the face of his friend’s anger. This is exactly what it looks like to Seongwoo. Daniel feels guilty—he does—but he and Seongwoo haven’t been on proper speaking terms for a while now, not since before Daniel even found out about his move in the first place. It isn’t entirely his fault that it would have been so much easier to leave town without notice than to man-up and approach Seongwoo and tell him that he has another job halfway across the country.

“Like what the hell have I done to you? Am I that shitty of a best friend that you didn’t want to tell me what the fuck was going on with you?”

Seongwoo is pulling out all of the punches, and it is Daniel’s turn to grab onto the counter to keep from falling to the floor, guilt almost entirely overwhelming him. It is not Seongwoo that has been the bad friend, not really—that is Daniel’s burden and Daniel’s alone—but it has been hard to be Seongwoo’s friend when Daniel can’t think of anything beyond Jihoon.

“I’m sorry. I—”

“No, Daniel. I don’t think you are,” snaps Seongwoo, and Daniel’s mouth snaps shut accordingly. Seongwoo sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. He waves toward the stack of boxes. “You know this isn’t even what I came over here to yell at you about.”

Daniel grimaces. The moment he has been trying to avoid for the past two and a half weeks—longer than, actually—has finally arrived. Somebody else knows about him and Jihoon. There is really no other explanation for the way Seongwoo has barreled right into Daniel’s home without regard to any manners or niceties. Daniel supposed he deserves this, really, for being such an awful friend. He deserves Seongwoo’s anger.

“Were you even going to fucking tell me about Jihoon? Like, you and him? You had sex. You had sex numerous times, according to Minhyun, apparently—who, by the way, isn’t very happy he had to find all of this out a two weeks after the fact halfway across the world with Jihoon drunk and bawling his eyes out all over him. I mean, what the fuck, Daniel?! What the hell was going through your mind? You and Jihoon?”

“It didn’t quite end up being me and Jihoon, now did it?”

“Don’t get smart with me, you jackass,” snaps Seongwoo, and he is even angrier than he was when he first came here completely uninvited. His voice gets louder with every word he speaks. “You went behind our backs. What? Could you not trust us? What the fuck have we ever done to make you think that you can’t come to us with something as stupendous as whatever the fuck it was between you and Jihoon? I mean, is that why you’ve been so fucked up lately?”

“Seongwoo, I—”

“No, that’s not even the worst part. Lying to us, going behind our backs, that was a total douchebag move, yes, but it wasn’t the pinnacle of horrible things you’ve done lately. I mean, seriously, Jaehwan Tomlinson? What? Did you go down on your knees for him, too, the moment Jihoon was gone? Did you ever stop to think about what that might do to Jihoon?”

“He left me!” roared Daniel, because this is something that Jihoon himself also forgot. If Seongwoo is here now spouting off all of this bullshit about friends and secrets, then Daniel is going to tell his side of the story. “He planted himself right into my fucking bed, and he made me fucking fall in love with him, and he fucking left me. Don’t you dare think for a damn moment that your precious Jihoon is entirely blameless, because he’s the bastard who’s responsible for this whole damn mess in the first place!”

Seongwoo is stunned into silence, and Daniel can’t stop talking. He can’t stop the words falling from his mouth like projectile vomit. He has held this inside of himself for too long, kept quiet about the all-encompassing pain that has been his reality. Now, he has a chance to speak, and he is taking it, throwing all caution to the wind. He doesn’t care what Seongwoo thinks of him anymore. Doesn’t care that Seongwoo may judge him. Because the truth is that it doesn’t matter. It’s a little too late. Daniel is leaving for his new job in less than forty-eight hours.

“We fucked that last night before he left, you know. We fucked, and I woke up in the bed alone the next morning, and Jihoon wasn’t here, but he was everywhere. He was a ghost. A shadow. A parasite. He stayed with me, and he hasn’t really left. He still fucking haunts me, dammit,” he says, pausing to take a breath. He holds Seongwoo’s gaze, and he doesn’t dare look away. Even now he can still see the ghost of Jihoon hovering behind Seongwoo. Jihoon’s words I fucking love you echoes in his mind. His heart beats in time with them. “You can say whatever the hell you want to about what I may have done to Jihoon, but did you ever think to consider what he did to me? I can’t go anywhere in this damn city without seeing him. I haven’t slept in my bed since that night he was here with me, and I can barely sit in the producer’s chair without seeing his shit-eating grin staring me right in the face. And, yes, I dated Jaehwan, and I fucked Jaehwan, but it didn’t help. All I could see was Jihoon. All I’ve ever seen is Jihoon.”

“Daniel—”

“I’m just trying to survive, Seongwoo. I’m just trying to fucking survive with the shattered remnants that Jihoon’s left me with, and I can’t do that here, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I’d taken another job, and I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about Jihoon.”

There is a sudden, overwhelming silence when Daniel finally stops talking. Seongwoo doesn’t try to immediately fill it. He stares at Daniel with that pitying expression that Daniel hates so much, and Daniel wishes he were anywhere but here talking about Jihoon with Seongwoo. He feels like he has been flayed open. Like Seongwoo has just taken a knife and sliced him right down the center and pulled him apart, spilling his emotions and insecurities and fears all out for the world to see.

“You’re my best friend,” says Seongwoo, finally. He is much more subdued now than he was. He sounds sad, too, like he is half of a second away from circling around the center island and drawing Daniel into a big hug. Daniel wishes he would. “I don’t know what went wrong between us, but, dammit, you could’ve fucking come to me and told me about Jihoon and about you moving. What did I do to make you think you couldn’t?”

Daniel huffs, and he thinks about the elevator incident, and he wonders if Seongwoo has forgotten about it. If Seongwoo has forgotten about that shining moment when he finally manned-up and told Daniel the truth—that Daniel is nothing more than the opinion of the viewers. Maybe that is true, and maybe that is not, but it had hurt to hear regardless. It hurts to remember now.

“You’re frustrating, you know that, right?” says Seongwoo, and he grimaces like he knows exactly where Daniel’s thoughts have gone. “Sometimes, you make it seem like nothing matters to you other than what stupid strangers think of you on their television screen. It’s so hard to compete with that. It’s like you’d rather I wasn’t even around, and I just got tired of it. I said some things that I shouldn’t have, and that’s not okay, but neither is you keeping Jihoon a secret or the fact that you’re moving a secret, so I suppose we’re both at fault here in our own ways.”

“I’m sorry,” says Daniel.

There is really nothing else he can offer Seongwoo. These past couple of weeks have been hard. Living beyond Jihoon is the most difficult thing Daniel has ever had to do in his entire life. He has had to do it alone, and he knows that is only partially true. He could have come clean from the very beginning, from the very next morning after Jihoon shoved him up against the doorframe in Minhyun’s guest bedroom for the very first time, from the very moment his entire life began this long downward spiral.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” says Daniel again, because the first time doesn’t seem like it was enough. He should probably spend the rest of his life—or at least the rest of the time he still has here in this city—repeating those words. Seongwoo is a good friend, and somewhere along the line, Daniel forgot that. He doesn’t want to ever forget that again. Doesn’t want to ever be as alone as he has been again.

“I know. Me, too,” says Seongwoo.

He finally lets go of the counter before him. He walks deliberately toward Daniel, extending his arms. Daniel meets him halfway, melting into the hug. It’s like coming home. Seongwoo’s hugs have always been the best thing in the entire world, and Daniel has missed them more than he cares to admit. He is so overcome by emotion that he presses his face right into the crook of Seongwoo’s shoulder and thinks about crying—about letting go of all of the bad things that he has carried around with him over the past two and a half weeks—but the tears don’t come. Seongwoo’s arms tighten around him. They sink to the floor right there in Daniel’s kitchen that is filled with moving boxes. Daniel doesn’t cry, but he lets go of all of those bad things anyway, and Seongwoo hold him through it all.

Not everything is perfect between them. Daniel is still hurt by Seongwoo’s words, though less so now that they are out in the open between them, and Seongwoo is still miffed that Daniel didn’t trust him enough to spill his secrets, but they’re better than they have been all week. Daniel holds onto Seongwoo for dear life, and he doesn’t ever want them to let go.

Chapter 19  
Chapter Text  
Seongwoo is leaning up against the railing of Daniel’s back patio, and he is smoking a cigarette. The city is falling asleep around him, the bright lights glistening in the darkness. Daniel sits in the chair next to him. His ass is frozen to the seat, but he has his nice heavy blanket draped over his shoulders. There is a glass of whiskey in his hand. Seongwoo has one as well. They’re not drunk. They’ve barely had more than sip each, but the presence of the alcohol is comforting in the awkwardness that still hangs in the air between them.

Daniel is dead-beat tired from packing all evening. Seongwoo has refused to touch a single box, not happy at all with Daniel’s decision to stick with the move. To leave him behind. He has stayed and offered his company, though, and that has been enough for Daniel, who has immensely missed his friend.

“So Jaehwan Tomlinson—how good was he in the sack? As good as his money makes him seem?” asks Seongwoo. He grins over at Daniel in the darkness. He has his cigarette held between his lips, and it glows red when he sucks on it. “Nah. Nobody’s got it all, do they?”

Daniel laughs, but his stomach churns. He takes a swig of the whiskey. It burns on the way down. He coughs. It isn’t the brand he favors, but Seongwoo likes it. Daniel had found an unopened bottle in his cabinets when he had been packing earlier, so he figured they might as well split it between them. He swirls the ice cubes around in his glass, staring down at it as he dutifully gives Seongwoo his response.

“Don’t really know how to answer that, really. I, uh, could only see Jihoon.”

“Even when…?”

“Yeah,” says Daniel. He doesn’t need Seongwoo to finish his question, and his cheeks burn at the admission that it hadn’t been Jaehwan who had gotten him off but rather the memory of Jihoon coming undone before him.

Seongwoo snorts, aborting it almost immediately until he can’t hold it back anymore and it turns into a full-out laugh. Daniel glares at him, but the effect is lost in the darkness. Seongwoo continues to howl in laughter, his cigarette dangling dangerously between his fingers now. It is almost burnt all the way back to the filter. Daniel has the urge to reach over and press it out before it leaves a dark circular burn in the wood of the railing. 

“I hope you choke,” says Daniel without any heat.

Seongwoo only laughs harder. The doorbell rings from inside the house, a tiny musical sound floating out into the darkness. Daniel feels a flash of confusion. The only person left in the city who would make a house call is right here with him on the back porch. Seongwoo’s laughter dries up a little, and he makes waves his hand toward the house, reminding Daniel that it is his place to answer his own door.

Daniel throws back the rest of his whiskey to get rid of it. He stands up from his seat, leaving the blanket a fluffy pile on the chair. He offers to take Seongwoo’s glass of whiskey, but Seongwoo isn’t done with it. He leaves Seongwoo to his cigarettes and his alcohol, stepping back inside his house as the doorbell rings a second time.

He has to go through the kitchen to get to the front door due to all of the boxes he has blocking the path through the living room. He sets his empty whiskey glass down on the counter on his way through. The route via the kitchen isn’t much better, and he stumbles over the last stack of boxes in his way. He staggers to the door, only catching his balance against the sturdy hardwood at the last possible second. Once he is on steady feet again, he opens the door, and he freezes.

Minhyun’s slap stings, but Daniel isn’t given any time to really react before Minhyun draws into him a tight hug. Daniel stands unmoving in his hold for a moment, staring at Jonghyun over Minhyun’s shoulder. Jonghyun isn’t nearly as happy to see him as Minhyun is, evident by the cold glare that’s gracing his face. Tension starts to build around them. Daniel thinks he should make an attempt to disperse it before it becomes unbearable, but he isn’t given the chance.

“Hug me back, you asshole,” demands Minhyun.

So Daniel does, his limbs acting of their own according. Minhyun tightens his hold on him. He almost squeezing the air out of Daniel’s lungs, and Daniel finally rips his gaze from Jonghyun. He drops head so that he can press his face into Minhyun’s shoulder. Familiarity washes over him. He has barely been gone two and a half weeks, but it feels like it has been an eternity.

“God, I’ve missed you, Min .”

“Doesn’t seem like it. You ignored me the entire time I was gone. I had to jump on the first plane out once the show wrapped up—completely skipping out on all of the rad after parties, by the way—just so I could make damn sure you’d talk to me,” responds Minhyun. His voice is a little muffled by Daniel’s neck, but the words still land harshly on Daniel’s ears, and Daniel flinches. Minhyun draws back from him. There is a glint in his eyes that suggests Daniel isn’t going to like what Minhyun is going to say next. “Was the phone too heavy to pick up or something?”

Daniel’s blood runs cold. Minhyun has always been good at dragging anything out of him, and the tone of Minhyun’s voice belies that he already has a pretty good idea of exactly why Daniel hasn’t answered any of his phone calls or responded to any of his text messages since he jetted off to the other side of the world with Jihoon in tow. Minhyun is giving Daniel his most unimpressed expression. Daniel feels a spike of guilt shoot right through him.

“Oh, Min , you’re not guilt-tripping him already, are you? You haven’t even made it inside yet,” says Seongwoo, appearing behind Daniel. For a brief second, Daniel sags in relief, happy for his interruption. “And trust me when I say the best past is in here.”

Daniel whips around to face Seongwoo, any gratitude he had felt for him disintegrating. Seongwoo has a shit-eating grin on his lips. His cheeks are pink from sitting outside smoking for so long. He has Daniel’s duvet draped over his shoulders. He doesn’t look one bit ashamed that he is throwing Daniel to the wolves. Quite oppositely, he looks damn proud of himself.

Minhyun glances between the two of them suspiciously. He elbows past Daniel, and Jonghyun follows him into the house. They both stop just inside of the entryway. For a moment, nobody moves. Nobody says anything. Minhyun stares at the boxes cluttering Daniel’s living room, at the empty space on his wall that once held the collage of pictures of all of Daniel’s friends. Daniel stares at Minhyun as he takes it all in. Guilt travels through Daniel’s veins, and Daniel’s lungs feel smaller than usual in his chest.

In the end, it isn’t Minhyun who finally breaks the silence but rather Jonghyun. He whips around to face Daniel.

“Why are all of your things in boxes? Are you—you’re not moving, are you?”

Daniel’s silent, because he supposes Jonghyun’s question is rhetorical given all of the evidence presented before them, but Seongwoo has still not gotten the enjoyment he wants out of this. He has spent the entire evening unhappy, watching Daniel painstakingly pack away his entire life, and he has made sure Daniel has known his feelings in regard to it all. He isn’t about to pass up the opportunity to triple-team Daniel into staying.

“Oh, he’s not just moving. He was going to move and not tell anybody until he was gone.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” snaps Daniel at Seongwoo, but his attention is on Minhyun, who hasn’t said anything yet. Minhyun hasn’t even turned around to look at him, and Daniel is starting to get worried. He would have thought Minhyun would have been the first to speak up. He feels a shiver of fear across his entire body, because out of everybody, Minhyun’s reaction worries him the worst. It is Minhyun who Daniel cares about the most. 

“Immensely,” agrees Seongwoo.

Daniel take his eyes off Minhyun long enough to shoot Seongwoo a dirty look, and when he turns back to Minhyun, he is looking straight at Daniel. Minhyun’s expression is blank, but his eyes are cold. Daniel swallows the excess spit in his mouth, bracing himself for the worst. He hasn’t been a good friend to Minhyun. He deserves whatever it is Minhyun wants to throw at him right now—verbally and physically.

“You’re a piece of work, Daniel, but I can’t say I didn’t expect as much in the end,” says Minhyun, and he doesn’t sound particularly mad, not like Seongwoo had when he’d first found out Daniel was moving. Minhyun doesn’t sound anything except detached, and Daniel thinks it hurts even worse than Minhyun’s anger ever could. “You know, we’ve been friends for four years, and you’ve still not told me who Roa is or what the hell she did to you or why I had to pick up the pieces she left behind, so I guess it’s only natural that you wouldn’t tell me about this, either.”

“Minhyun—”

“No, Daniel. It’s fine, really,” says Minhyun in that same detached voice that makes Daniel’s toes curl. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with you—I don’t know if I ever really have—but if this is what you want, I’ll respect it. I’ll respect it like I have every other decision you’ve ever made, regardless of whether or not I’ve agreed with it. You want to get out of this city or whatever, and I won’t try to talk you out of it, but, you know, you’re going about it all the wrong ways.”

Minhyun has said his part, and he waves off Daniel’s attempt to respond. He stares at Daniel for the longest time, giving nothing away, and his gaze is still cold. He sighs as he steps forward to press the softest of kiss to Daniel’s cheek. It feels like goodbye already. Daniel kind of wants to cry right here before them all.

Minhyun steps away, and he turns to Jonghyun, and he says, “It looks like it was a wasted trip after all.”

“That’s it?” interrupts Seongwoo, sounding just as enraged as he had earlier when he had blown uninvited into Daniel’s home. “You find out this bastard’s moving—that he’s not told anybody in the entire two weeks that he’s fucking known—and all you’ve got to say is that he’s going about it in all the wrong ways? Fucking hell, Minhyun. The fact he’s leaving in the first place is wrong. He’s our best friend, dammit!”

“No. My best friend wouldn’t have ignored me while I was gone, and he certainly wouldn’t have conveniently neglected to tell me that he was sleeping with a man he swore up and down he hated, and he most definitely wouldn’t have been a total asshole for the past three weeks.”

“I’ve been the asshole?” demands Daniel, staring at Minhyun. He feels at a whole loss for the turn of the conversation. It hurts so much that Minhyun thinks so lowly of him that he can scarcely breathe. It seems like time itself is slowing down, like seconds last entire minutes and minutes last hours. “He cornered me, and he fucked me up, and he left me, and I’m the fucking asshole?”

“Yes, Daniel,” says Minhyun, and his voice finally matches the cold of his eyes. “You’re not the one who was choking on their own tears, drunk off their ass in my hotel room over some bastard of a man who’s too afraid to love him back.”

Time slows to a complete halt. There is a fire in Minhyun’s eyes, and one lit in Daniel’s chest. Daniel has never felt so insulted by anybody in his entire life, not even in the days that followed Roa’s funeral when he started to believe people when they told him it was all of his fault she was dead. It isn’t so much different now, faced with Minhyun who is blaming him for the catastrophe that was him and Jihoon together. It hurts ten times as much and then some.

“Get out,” says Daniel, because he doesn’t have to listen to anything Minhyun might want to blame him for. Not when he’s already blaming himself. Not when Jihoon’s words I fucking love you are still playing on repeat in his mind. He points to the door, and his finger trembles, but he stands his ground. “Get out now.”

“You’re not—” begins Seongwoo on behalf of Minhyun, subdued in the face of Daniel’s anger, but Daniel isn’t having it.

“I’m serious. Get the fuck out of my house. All of you.”

Daniel wants to cry. He wants to break down like he hasn’t let himself do in front of anybody this entire time, but he still won’t. He has his pride if he has nothing else. He’ll cling to it. He’ll fight tooth and nail for it. He wants these people out of his house, these people who have paraded around as his friends for the past four years. He wants them gone almost as much as he, himself, wishes he weren’t here.

It’s Minhyun who breaks first. Minhyun has never been one for overstaying his welcome, and Daniel doesn’t want him here. Minhyun doesn’t look at Daniel as he obeys the request. He just walks out of Daniel’s life with his head held high, and Daniel is almost overtaken by the urge to really cry now. He has been a crap friend to Minhyun. They’ve broken in all the ways he never thought they would. Minhyun isn’t even fighting to get him back. Daniel isn’t not sure he wants him to, either, not if things are this bad that Minhyun can’t even look him in the eye as he leaves.

Seongwoo sighs. He drops the duvet to the floor where it puddles at his feet. He opens his mouth to say something to Daniel, to maybe calm him down. His eyes meet those of Daniel’s. In the end, he says nothing. He pats Daniel on the shoulder as he follows Minhyun. It doesn’t feel as much of a goodbye as Minhyun’s exit did, but there is a note of almost-finality to him as well.

It is only Jonghyun left in the entryway with him. The door is standing wide open, because nobody’s bothered to shut it. The icy air of mid-February steals away the warmth of Daniel’s heating unit. He doesn’t feel the cold, not really. He doesn’t feel anything except numb—numb over Jihoon and numb over shoving these people out of his life.

Jonghyun dares to meet Daniel’s eyes, and he isn’t making a move toward the door.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah, well, ‘s not exactly news to me, now is it?” Daniel retorts. He wants to step forward and grab Jonghyun by the shoulders and push him out of his home, but that would be rude. That would crossing a line that he doesn’t want to even touch, and, besides, Jonghyun deserves better than that.

“He’s just looking out for friend.”

“Funnily enough, I thought I was his friend.”

“Really? Are you this shitty to all your friends, then? Ignoring them for three weeks, fucking somebody behind their backs, and then skipping town without them knowing?” asks Jonghyun, meanly. He pauses to take a breath, but he isn’t finished tearing Daniel down. “Because, quite honestly, you’ve not given Minhyun a reason to think that you even give a damn about him.”

The ghost of Jihoon reappears, and it steps in front of Jonghyun, and Daniel can’t see beyond it. He can’t hear beyond the words you’d never give me a damn reason to stay. Jonghyun is saying the same to Daniel now, only he is in defense of Minhyun, and Daniel feels a thousand times worse.

“It’s not that easy!” he roars. Jonghyun hiccups in surprise. Minhyun and Seongwoo can probably hear him all the way from his driveway, but he doesn’t care. It’s important that he says this now. He might not ever get a chance to again. “Jihoon fucking hurricaned himself into my damn life, and then he was just gone—no warning, no goodbye. Nothing. He was gone, and I was all alone. Do you know how that feels? Do you know how it feels to be so fucking in love with somebody who doesn’t give a damn about you in return?”

“Oh, let’s pity Daniel,” sneers Jonghyun, voice matching Daniel’s in volume. “Let’s pity the one man on Earth who thinks that he’s alone in loving somebody who doesn’t love them back. Because surely there can’t be another dumb soul in the entire universe who’s stupid enough to fall in love with somebody who doesn’t feel the same.”

“Don’t mock me,” he snaps. “You don’t know anything. You haven’t been in a relationship for the entire time I’ve known you. I mean, you’ve had your head so far up Minhyun’s ass that you’ve—oh, holy fuck. You’re in love with Minhyun.”

The color fades from Jonghyun’s face. The fighting stance he had adopted disappears instantly, and he shrinks in front of Daniel, eyes wide like a scared child. Daniel has hit the nail on the head, but he doesn’t feel as victorious as he might have thought he would. He is overwhelmed with a feeling of sympathy, because this man standing before him is wearing his shoes. He knows all too well how devastating it is to offer your heart to somebody who couldn’t care less to have it.

“Fuck, Jonghyun. How long?”

“I don’t know—forever?” whispers Jonghyun, and he sounds halfway between humiliated and relieved, like he is finally getting this off his chest. He glances over his shoulder toward the driveway where Minhyun and Seongwoo are huddled against the car, closer than typical friends stand. When he turns back to face Daniel, the light in his eyes are dimmed. “It’s not the same, though, you and me. Minhyun. He doesn’t like me back. I mean, he’s been practically dating Seongwoo for years. I’ve got no chance in hell, really, and I’m just pathetic thinking otherwise.”

“You’re not,” says Daniel. He feels his own heart break on behalf of Jonghyun. It doesn’t matter what he says to comfort him. They both know Jonghyun’s words are true. Minhyun and Seongwoo have always been more than just friends and, if not for Minhyun’s crazy work schedule that keeps him out of the country over half of the year, they’d probably be even more.

Jonghyun smiles sadly at Daniel, but it’s different than the other sad smiles Daniel has received over the past couple of weeks. There is no pity in it. There is just sadness, age-old grief that Jonghyun has carried around with him for too long spilling into his expression.

“Jihoon loves you,” says Jonghyun. “He might not ever tell you, not while he’s sober at least, but he’s fucking in love with you. He spent the entire trip moping over you, getting grouchy over the stupidest things, obsessing over your show. It killed him to see you with Jaehwan, and he got even grumpier. He withdrew into himself, and I swear I confiscated like twelve bottles of partially drank alcohol from his room over the past week. He didn’t really say why, for the longest time, he was so heavy on the bottle, and then this afternoon—or well, morning here I suppose—he just… he just lost it completely. He saw those pictures of you and Jaehwan going out on a date last night—on Valentine’s Day like a proper couple—and I think it was finally too much.”

Daniel feels his knees go weak. His chest knots up, and it’s hard to breathe, and he has to reach for the door handle for support so that he doesn’t crumble to the floor. He hears Jonghyun words, and he pictures Jihoon devastated and heartbroken just like Daniel himself was, and it’s not painted to be a pretty sight at all. He wants to vomit right here, all over his own hardwood floors, possibly even on Jonghyun’s designer shoes.

He thinks he should say something. He should tell Jonghyun to stop talking about this. That it’s too late, really. That Jihoon has no right to claim a broken heart when he is the one that left. When Jihoon is the one who didn’t say goodbye. But he can’t find his voice. Jonghyun continues to speak.

“Daniel, I’ve known Jihoon since we were in diapers. I was there when he got his first kiss. I comforted him when the first guy he slept with left him broken hearted two days later. I watched him go through strings of men and of women throughout college, never settling down, always eager for the next pretty face. I’ve seen how he’s claimed he’s hated you since the moment you all met, but I’ve also seen how he’s been lying this entire time.”

Jonghyun pauses, and he stares into Daniel’s eyes so intensely. It’s like he is looking for something. Daniel has still lost his voice, the pictures in his mind playing like a movie reel as Jonghyun tells the story of Jihoon that Daniel has never been privy to. Something deep inside him aches. He wishes he did know these tales that shaped Jihoon into the man he is today. But the thing about hating somebody for four years, Daniel has never gotten these stories.

“He’s good at that, you know—lying,” says Jonghyun, and Daniel thinks he does know this. “He’s gotten better over the years. You’ve certainly given him enough reason to, with the way you two have carried on. But you know what I think? Jihoon has only claimed to hate you, because you blasted into Minhyun’s life, and you were this amazing person, and he couldn’t help but get a little star struck by you. By how you commanded an entire room without even trying. I think he fell in love with you that very first day, but I think he thought you’d never give him the time of the day, so to protect himself from you breaking his heart, he decided to make you hate him anyway—I think he always figured you’d hate him either way.”

Jonghyun’s words cut him deep, and he doesn’t really know how to take them. He doesn’t know how he feels, because, yes, he’s fallen head over heels in love with Jihoon. He’s spent the past two weeks haunted by the man’s ghost, but in the end, he was the one who Jihoon left. He was the one who had to wake up alone in a bed that smelled like their sex and pick up the shattered pieces Jihoon had left behind.

Maybe he’s wanted to hear these words since Jihoon left—the truth that Jihoon did love him all along, that it wasn’t just hate between them for four years. Or maybe he’s wanted to hear them longer than that, even. Maybe he’s wanted to hear them ever since that first night Jihoon shoved him up against the doorframe in Minhyun’s guest room and kissed him. Because if he’d known this all along, everything might have been easier. Everything might have been different.

But he hasn’t known these words, and now that he has, he’s not sure what to do with them. The truth is they terrify him. They frighten him right to the bones, and he doesn’t know what to say in response to Jonghyun. He isn’t sure how he is supposed to force his voice around the lump of fear in his throat.

He wants to be alone. He is so tired. Between Minhyun’s dismissal and Jonghyun’s news, Daniel is so done with this day. On some level, he acknowledges the fact that he and Jihoon are in the same city once again, and that is almost more terrifying than Jonghyun telling Daniel that Jihoon is in love with him, that he has been this entire time and Daniel himself was blind. It is all too much.

It is all too fucking much, and all Daniel wants to do is crawl into his bed and just stare up at the ceiling and let his thoughts run unhindered a million miles per hour through his mind as he tries to get a grasp on the reality presented before him. He can’t do that. Not with Jonghyun still here. Not with Minhyun and Seongwoo still fuming in his driveway. Not with the ghost of Jihoon still haunting him.

“I think, um—I think I need some time to myself,” says Daniel. His voice shakes as much as he expects it, and a couple of the words get stuck in his throat. “Just, um—just need to—”

“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” asks Jonghyun.

He lays his hand on Daniel’s shoulder, and Daniel melts into it. He feels like he is half of a second from losing it all. The only thing really weighing him down is this familiar touch of a friend who isn’t mad at him for any reason now. It is strange, really, how a shared heartache can rally people together, but Daniel thinks about how much it must hurt Jonghyun to see Minhyun with Seongwoo all of the time—to see the love alive and obvious between them—and he thinks about his own hurt whenever Jihoon crosses his mind, and he understands why Jonghyun has rallied for them. Why Jonghyun has spilled Jihoon’s deepest, darkest secret.

“What if it’s too late?”

The question falls from Daniel’s lips without first passing through his brain-to-mouth filter, and he blushes bright red all the way to his ears. He wants to take it back, wants to reach out into the space between them and wrap his hands around those words—around his insecurities—and hide them from Jonghyun and everybody else. Jonghyun is looking at him like Daniel is the most pitiful thing in the entire world. Daniel hates the look on Jonghyun, especially directed at him, and he wishes he wouldn’t have said anything in the first place.

Jihoon has fucked him up so bad.

“It isn’t.”

“But what if it is?” Daniel asks.

He can’t stop himself. He shivers. He tells himself it is because it is cold, and they’re still standing in the entryway with the door propped wide open. That isn’t the whole truth. Daniel isn’t that good at lying to himself.

Jonghyun scrunches up his face. His eyebrows are furrowed. There are wrinkle lines across his forehead, and he chews on his bottom lip. It’s a long moment before he replies.

“I think the fact that you’re even asking me this means it’s not too late. It means you don’t want it to be, and I don’t think Jihoon wants it to be, either.”

Jonghyun sounds so sure of his words that Daniel can’t bring himself to voice his insecurities again. He nods, ducking his head so that he doesn’t have to look Jonghyun in the eyes any longer. It is much easier to keep his demons of insecurity quiet when he isn’t faced with Jonghyun’s open, pitying expression.

“Just go talk to him, okay?” suggests Jonghyun, almost apprehensively. He starts to walk properly toward the door now, sensing that he has said his part and it is Daniel’s turn to take hold of the reins. Jonghyun glances at the stacks of boxes scattered around the living room. “Don’t just leave and think that’ll be the end. It won’t be, you know, because this thing with Jihoon? That’s the kind of shit you carry around with you no matter where you go.”

Jonghyun says nothing else. He shuts the door behind him and leaves Daniel to the loneliness of his half-packed house. Daniel doesn’t move for the longest time. The chill still hangs in the air. A car starts up in his driveway, and then another one does. They’re both gone within minutes, and Daniel is completely, one hundred percent alone.

But he’s not really. He staggers to the couch, dragging the abandoned duvet with him, and plops down on his makeshift bed. He leans back against the cushions. When he closes his eyes, there is Jihoon, smiling that shit-eating grin that has haunted Daniel for the past week and a half. He can hear Jihoon’s voice in his mind: I love you! I fucking love you, but you’d never give me a damn reason to stay! I had to leave! It plays on a loop over and over and over again until Daniel almost can’t take it.

He throws himself across the couch, pressing his face against the worn fabric of the armrest. He prays for the oblivion of sleep, but it doesn’t come. It is just him and the ghost of Jihoon and the memory of Jonghyun telling him that Jihoon loves him and has loved him this entire time, and it is everything Daniel has wanted to hear over the past week and a half.

It is.

But it is everything he wishes he didn’t know. He is supposed to be leaving the city for good in less than forty-eight hours. As much as Jonghyun had insisted it wasn’t too late for him and Jihoon, Daniel can’t help but to feel like it is. His life is already half-packed away in the boxes scattered around his home.

It is obvious that sleep isn’t going to come. Daniel feels restless. It is half past eleven o’clock in the night. He still has to do his show tomorrow, so he is going to need to be up in exactly five hours. He feels bone dead tired, but his mind won’t stop. It won’t rest. At the epicenter of it all is Jihoon and how broken Jihoon had sounded over the phone this very morning and how Jihoon is undoubtedly in the very same city Daniel is right now.

Daniel lets his mind drift with this. He thinks about what Jihoon is doing now. If he is with Sungwoon, who was conspicuously absent in the party to greet Daniel and Seongwoo. Or if he is alone, too tired of being forced into tight quarters with everybody that he has had to get away by himself. That he has had to lock himself away in his own fancy apartment all alone. Or if, maybe, he is crashing at Minhyun’s home, because nobody really trusts him to be by himself after he had called Daniel drunk and crying this morning.

Daniel tosses and turns on the couch, though the furniture isn’t really big enough for him to move too much. His mind doesn’t rest. It won’t rest, not with Jihoon saturating his every pore. Dozens of possibilities of Jihoon’s current whereabouts flood his mind, but there is only one thing Daniel can fixate upon: wherever Jihoon is, he isn’t here, and Daniel wishes he were, even after everything, and that is probably the worst part of it all.

Chapter 20  
Chapter Text  
Daniel shows up to the station for his second to last show ever exactly two minutes early. He has just enough time to take his seat and note Seongwoo standing all alone in the far corner watching his every move. There’s no time now to call him out on it, but Daniel thinks that maybe he should later, after the cameras are done rolling. He has spent the past week completely isolated from his best friend, and he is going to be gone from the city tomorrow, and he is not going to leave things stilted as they are between him and Seongwoo.

Baekho is digging in the drawer next to him. He produces the roll of invisible tape he had been searching for. He starts to shut the drawer, but a shiny glint of light catches Daniel’s eye, and he grabs Baekho’s wrist before he can do so. Baekho looks up at Daniel in surprise. Daniel ignores him and snatches the penguin figurine from its resting place. He holds it gently in his hand for a moment before he sets it in its old spot next to his name tag. Apeach the penguin sits proudly in its usual spot for the first time in over two weeks.

The cameras start rolling, and Daniel jumps head-first into his job, but he’s acutely aware that everybody in the entire studio is gawking at him. Apeach’s absence hasn’t gone unnoticed to anyone. Seongwoo’s gaze is the heaviest of them all. When there is a breather during the weather, Seongwoo doesn’t fail to make a bee line straight to him.

“Is there something I can help you with?” asks Daniel, looking up at Seongwoo, whose attention is on the penguin figurine on the tabletop. Daniel glances down at it briefly then back up at Seongwoo, and when he does, he meets Seongwoo’s eyes. There is something glinting deep in them. Daniel gets a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Jisung said we’re planning a going away party for you tomorrow, still.”

“What do you want from me?” asks Daniel. The sinking feeling in his stomach isn’t going away. If anything, underneath Seongwoo’s intense gaze, it’s getting worse. Somewhere in the back of Daniel’s mind, he is thankful, at least, that Seongwoo is not ignoring him like he has been for the past week. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving. I’m sorry you had to find it out yourself.”

“But not sorry enough to stay in town?”

“I can’t stay here,” says Daniel immediately, the words rolling off his tongue on instinct. “Not when—”

“When what? When your entire life’s here?” challenges Seongwoo. There is a fire in his eyes, and it reminds Daniel of Seongwoo’s anger in the face of Minhyun’s acceptance yesterday. Seongwoo’s gaze flashes down to the penguin on the table. “Or when Jihoon’s in the same city again?”

Daniel grimaces, and just like that—by the mere mention of the man’s name—the ghost of Jihoon is right here again. He closes his eyes, but Jihoon’s there, too. His chest hurts. He thinks about Jihoon living and breathing in the same city, and it just sucks that he’s still being haunted by the ghost of the man.

“Look, I don’t know what all he’s told you—”

“A whole lot of nothing.”

“But it’s a little too late. Me and him, we didn’t quite work out, now, did we?”

“Never really gave it a good shot, now, did you?” returns Seongwoo, and it’s not fair at all. He mimics Daniel’s wince, like he knows exactly how deeply his words cut. He doesn’t bother taking them back. It wouldn’t matter if he did or not. They’re still true. He picks up the penguin figurine, and he runs a finger along the line of its clear wing. “It’s funny, you know. This penguin. You named it after Jihoon, and you didn’t even know it.”

“What? No, I didn’t. I—”

“Minhyun knew exactly what he was getting you to agree to.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“No? Then why did you hide this away in your drawer for the past two weeks? Why are you just bringing it out now?”

“You know, I think I preferred it when we weren’t talking,” says Daniel, but he doesn’t really mean it. Not really. He had been so lonely stuck in the city without even Seongwoo as company, and he tries not to think about how lonely he is going to be in the next few months in the new city as he starts over. Seongwoo won’t be in the new city. Nobody will.

“Did you and Jihoon even talk?” asks Seongwoo. “Because Lord knows you don’t talk to me, and you haven’t been talking to Minhyun, and I bet if I called up Jaehwan, he’d say you didn’t really talk to him, either. You know, to talk for a living, you’ve got this strange tendency to avoid important conversations when they matter.”

“Are you quite done picking apart my dazzling character traits? Or would you like pen and paper to keep track of them?”

Seongwoo raises his eyebrows at him, clearly unimpressed, and he says, “You’re doing it again. Do you even notice it? Like is this a thing you do for shits and giggles just to piss people off?”

Daniel grimaces. His eyes flash to the countdown clock above the camera. It isn’t close enough to zero for him to justifiably shoo Seongwoo away from the desk so that he can avoid the conversation at hand. He knows he has a knack for avoiding important topics. It is how he has survived the last eight years, honestly. He would rather not have it thrown back in his face, especially not this early in the morning by one of his best friends.

“This is about Minhyun, isn’t it? About what he said yesterday?” asks Daniel, sighing. He doesn’t have need of the question, really, because he already knows the answer, and the way Seongwoo averts his gaze only confirms Daniel’s suspicions. “I’ll head over to his place first thing after work, all right?”

“Are you sure you don’t need that precious time to unpack?”

Daniel rolls his eyes. He doesn’t bother responding. They’re out of time anyway. He doesn’t have to wave Seongwoo away. Seongwoo leaves of his own accord, his part having been said. He’s as in-tuned to the routine of the morning show as Daniel himself is. He is a professional. He can just as easily make Daniel feel guilty by glaring at him from his corner.

The countdown clock lands on zero. The music plays, and Daniel does the lead-in. It is hard to fathom not doing this after tomorrow, but that is his life. He is a little anxious about getting into a new routine at the parent station. It will take some getting used to. There is so much he won’t have in the new city that he has here. He has gotten so used to working alongside Baekho and Sujeong that he isn’t sure how well he will adapt to new people.

But that doesn’t mean he isn’t looking forward to a fresh start.

They wrap up the show after a while, and it’s time for Daniel to turn his chair over to Jungsoo. He packs Apeach away in the drawer, placing it gently down in its resting spot. He isn’t sure whether or not he is going to take Apeach with him or if, in light of Seongwoo’s latest news, it would be better all around to just pass the penguin figurine on as a parting gift to his successor. That, though, is tomorrow’s problem.

He slips past Jungsoo on his way to the door, and he catches up to Seongwoo at the elevator. It is not so easy to breathe now, not with how Daniel’s mind tarries on the exact moment when he and Seongwoo stood in this very spot and broke so terribly. They’re not broken now, or, at least, they’re not as broken, but Daniel still can’t catch his breath until they’re both inside of the elevator and it’ is descending.

They’re not alone in the elevator, so they’re quiet. Though there are dozens of things they should talk about right now, all of them are things that other people don’t need to be privy to. They stand side-by-side staring up at the numbers slowly counting down the floors. The elevator stops two stories down to let out the other three people inside. Nobody else gets on. They’re by themselves for this precious moment. Daniel is riding this to the ground, but Seongwoo is getting off on the next floor down.

“Just talk, all right?” says Seongwoo finally, his voice taking on a note of desperation that sounds eerie falling from his lips. “I swear we’re gonna listen, like if that’s your issue.”

That isn’t his problem, but Daniel doesn’t tell him as much. He just nods, acquiescing. The real issue is that he has made it a habit not to talk about Roa and not to talk about Jihoon and not to talk about anything that really matters to him, because he is so fucking terrified of losing everything. He has spent the last eight years telling himself that he’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t get too attached. He can’t lose something that doesn’t mean that much to him. It can’t hurt him.

Only it can, and it has, and he hasn’t done a good job of holding Jihoon at arm’s length like he has done with everything else in his life. Maybe that was his downfall. Maybe that moment right at the beginning in Minhyun’s guest room when Jihoon shoved him up against the doorframe and kissed him like there was no tomorrow—maybe that was the beginning of the end.

Maybe Seongwoo is right. Maybe he does need to start talking.

The elevator dings The doors split open, revealing a long, empty corridor. Seongwoo doesn’t immediately get out. He stares at Daniel until Daniel finally musters up the courage to look back. Seongwoo has that awful look about him, the one that makes Daniel want to fall to his knees and beg his forgiveness. The one that makes Daniel want to spill all of his deepest, darkest secrets. Daniel swallows the spit that has gathered in his mouth, and he averts his gaze before he starts vomiting up his most fiercely guarded thoughts.

Seongwoo isn’t really the person he owes this explanation to anyhow. Not now at least. Maybe one day in the future Daniel will tell him everything of his past. Or maybe Daniel won’t have to. Maybe Seongwoo will find out on his own accord.

“You’re my best friend, you know that, right?” asks Seongwoo. It’s an odd moment of vulnerability between them, but Seongwoo’s face is open and honest when Daniel lifts his gaze again. “It was supposed to be me and you until the end, but now… Just… I still don’t think you should leave. No matter how badly Jihoon fucked you up—no matter how much you think you need to get away—you’re not thinking clearly, and in a week from now or a month or, hell, a year, you’re going to wake up and wish you were back home with all of us. Don’t put yourself into that position.”

“I’ve got a flight out tomorrow evening. I’m expected to start the new job on Friday morning. I can’t—Seongwoo, it’s too late.”

Seongwoo opens his mouth like he wants to argue more, but in the end, he says nothing more. He nods once, a gesture of farewell, before he exits the elevator. The doors shut almost instantly, as if they had only been held open for so long out of courtesy. It is another minute or so before the elevator finally stops on the ground floor, freeing Daniel.

The lobby is bustling with activity. Daniel skirts around it all, keeping his gaze set firmly on the exit to discourage anybody from attempting to flag him down to discuss work. He is done for the day. He needs to get home and pack up the rest of his house, but he has to make a stop first. He can’t really afford to be hung up at the station.

Outside on the sidewalk, he hails the first cab he can. He rattles off the address to the drive. The roads to his destination are familiar. Daniel stares out the window at the passing scenery. He tries not to think about how this might be the last time he’ll ever take these exact streets. After tomorrow, he will be gone.

The cab stops right up front. Daniel pays his fare, and he climbs out. He stands on the curb as the taxi cab drives off. He stares at the house before him. The last time he was here, he had stormed out in the wake of Jihoon’s cutting words. Jihoon had gotten the best of him that day, but Daniel supposes the awful truth of everything is that Jihoon gets the best of him on any given day.

It takes a monumental effort to make the first step toward the front door, but by some miracle, Daniel does it. It is easy to cross the rest of the distance. He hovers on the front step for a moment and just stares at the frosted glass of the door. He takes a deep, calming breath. He thinks of Roa and how he should have told this story a long, long time ago. He pressed the doorbell. He can hear it echoing inside the house.

Minhyun opens the door a moment later, dressed in a pair of long pajama pants and Seongwoo’s old university sweatshirt. He looks soft and friendly for just a fraction of a second before he truly realizes who is standing on his front steps. He looks like coming home—like Daniel’s best friend—like the man that Daniel isn’t really sure he can live without. But then realization dawns upon Minhyun, and his face hardens. He opens his mouth to say something—probably to kick him out before he has even let him in—but Daniel can’t let Minhyun talk first. Daniel needs to say his part right now before he chickens out.

“Her name was Roa Kim, and she’s dead because of me.”

It isn’t the introduction Daniel had ever thought he would give his dead friend, especially not to Minhyun. While he has maintained that he doesn’t want to talk about Roa to anybody, he has considered how he might approach the subject of her death one day in the far-off future. That day has come, but it’s nothing like Daniel ever fantasized. He never thought he would be standing out in the icy cold air of a mid-February afternoon on the doorstep of his best friend’s house, desperate to make amends, or at least to explain himself, before he leaves all of this behind him.

“It’s a bit of a long story. Mind if I come in?” asks Daniel.

It hurts him that he even has to ask Minhyun. He has never had to before. There is a brief second in which Minhyun doesn’t respond either way. Daniel gets a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Minhyun is going to turn him away. Daniel has been so awful to him over the past few weeks, probably even longer, so Daniel can’t say he doesn’t deserve Minhyun’s cold shoulder. He has lied to Minhyun about Jihoon and about moving and about Roa. He never used to lie to Minhyun this much.

But Minhyun steps back, motioning for Daniel to come in. Relief floods Daniel’s body, almost overwhelming the anxiety that had built up in his chest from the idea of finally talking about Roa. He lets this feeling of relief guide him into the living room, where he is not one bit surprised to see Jonghyun lounged across the couch. Jonghyun starts to get up, offering them privacy, but Daniel holds up his hand. He understands Jonghyun so much better now, and he doesn’t mind if Jonghyun knows this story, too. Everybody will by the time it is all over.

Daniel sits down in the arm chair across from the couch. Minhyun sits next to Jonghyun. Daniel doesn’t speak for a moment, choosing instead to unabashedly observe how Jonghyun unconsciously fits himself around Minhyun like Minhyun is his own personal sun. His own source of life. Daniel’s heart aches on Jonghyun’s behalf. It is awful being in love with somebody who can’t return it.

Minhyun shifts, impatient. Daniel’s eyes snap to him, and he can see the doubt in them that suggests Minhyun is second-thinking having even given Daniel a chance in the first place. Daniel visibly winces. Minhyun doesn’t react, just continues to stare at Daniel and to doubt his choice. Daniel has really fucked things up.

“She died in November, eight years ago.”

“I know,” says Minhyun. “We saw your interview with Songhee.”

Daniel winces again. He really should have told Minhyun this story a long time ago, long before Songhee ever resurfaced in his life. It isn’t any easier to think about Songhee now than it has been in the last few years. Even after having spoken with her, after having thrown the hatchet into a shallow grave between them, she reminds him of Roa in all of the wrong ways.

“We’d lived together all throughout college, and we had this great plan to conquer this city together, and there’s nobody I’d rather have had as my right hand man than Roa. We were thick as thieves,” says Daniel. Every word is painful, but he pushes forward. “We graduated together, walked side-by-side right up to get our diplomas, because we were that dependent upon one another. We lived in this, like, tiny apartment. It was advertised as a two-bedroom, but my room was barely bigger than a closet. No lie. Hers wasn’t much better. We’d moved in together our freshman year of college, and we always said we’d move out one day into a place that had room for a full sized refrigerator in the kitchen and for an actual shower in the bathroom, not just a showerhead above a drain.

“That day never came. Life changes after graduation, you know. You lose track of friends. People move away, and you meet new ones, and suddenly we were six months out of graduation, and I had my first gig at the station, pushing papers in the basement. Roa started working at the record company just down from the station. She met a man there. His name was Hancheol, and it wasn’t just Roa and me anymore.”

Daniel has to stop to catch his breath, to calm his heart pounding in his chest. This is the part he doesn’t like remembering. This is why he doesn’t tell this story. He closes his eye. When he opens them again, he looks straight at Minhyun. To Minhyun’s credit, he merely passively back Daniel and gives nothing away. Daniel glances over at Jonghyun, just to make sure he is still listening, too.

“I should have known from the very beginning that something was wrong. It’s just… People like Hancheol, they don’t exist in real life, you know? He led on to the entire world like he was this perfect species of a man concerned with third world hunger and juvenile poverty and a whole slew of other charitable issues that everybody should really be concerned with, but, deep down, he wasn’t like that at all. He didn’t give a fuck about anybody. He got off on being superior to everyone around him. He was a sociopath, and he was so, so mean to Roa. It was always in the backwards compliment sort of way. Like, he’d tell her she’d look good in a pair of jeans if only they were a darker wash. Or he’d tell her that she may have been good at some things but not this thing in particular. That sort of shit.”

This is the most Daniel’s ever said about the story of Roa, and he isn’t really sure he is even getting his point across, but neither Minhyun nor Jonghyun have interrupted him thus far. He hasn’t thought of Hancheol as a human being in so long that he had almost forgotten about the man’s self-proclaimed humanity. He had demonized Hancheol in the days after Roa’s death, and he had never bothered allowing the man any redemption in his mind. Hancheol didn’t deserve it, really. He had taken Roa from Daniel. That was the worst thing anyone could have ever done.

“He was very genial when he was out in public. He was nice when others were around, and for the longest time I didn’t even realize who he really was in private—and I lived with Roa. Things went from bad to worse, and I tried to be there for Roa. I tried to patch her up when he turned violent. I tried to cover for her when she just needed a breather. I tried to get her out, but I couldn’t. It was too late. Hancheol had grown into too big of a monster. I was powerless, really, to do anything except watch my best friend die.”

He stops talking for a moment. He squeezes his eyes shut, and there is Roa splayed out in a pool of her own blood on the cheap linoleum of their shoebox apartment. It is an image that has haunted him for the past eight years. It is no less vivid right now in Minhyun’s house than it was the day he saw it.

“It took me a year and a half to work my way up out of the basement. The promotion was great. It meant more money, and it meant Roa and I could finally move out of that forsakenly tiny apartment. We celebrated my promotion with a bottle of cheap champagne, just the two of us. In that moment, it really was just the two of us again, and it was good.

“But things don’t always stay that way. I started traveling a lot for my new job. I was away from home for weeks at a time, and I didn’t mind it, not really. I got to see sights in the world that I wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise, so I liked it. I liked it so much until one day I came home from an assignment in London, and the door to the apartment was standing open. Something was wrong, so I went in, and—and—”

He chokes over his words. In his mind, he is haunted by Roa’s dead blue eyes staring vacantly up at the ceiling. He is haunted by the blood that still stains his memories of her. He is not sure he can tell this story after all. Not if it hurts this much. Not if eight years haven’t dulled the sharp ache of loss.

Minhyun lays his hand on Daniel’s knee. Daniel jumps, eyes flying open to meet Minhyun’s gaze. Minhyun’s own eyes are watering with tears that he doesn’t let fall. This is Daniel’s story, yes, but Daniel is Minhyun’s best friend, and that is reason enough to share his pain. Daniel lets his gaze drop to Minhyun’s hand on his knee. He draws strength from the touch. He takes a deep breath and readies himself to power through to the end.

“He used one of our kitchen knives. There was blood everywhere, and the entire apartment stank of it. It stank of blood and stale cigarettes, and I’ll never forget the stench. Oh, fuck, I’ll never forget anything from that day, because the thing is—the thing that Songhee Kim herself wasn’t afraid to tell me at Roa’s funeral—it was my fault. Roa died because of me. I left her alone, too caught up in my own world adventures to keep an eye on her like I should have. I could’ve—I could’ve done so much more to protect her from that bastard of a man, and I didn’t. I didn’t do anything except pat her back and tell her that it was all going to get better. I fucking lied to my best friend, and she died because of it. Now, every fucking November I get a damn newsletter in the mail from that conference I’d been gone to when Roa was killed, and it hurts all over again.”

He hiccups out a sob, and he is done with talking about Roa. Forever, probably. It is too painful. He is thinking about all of the small details he had forced himself to forget in favor of preserving his sanity in the weeks that followed her death. How she had only been wearing a single black boot, its mate abandoned near her bedroom door, probably lost in the scuffle that had taken place. How she had fought Hancheol so desperately she had broken her right hand. How her fingers pointed in unnatural directions. How the mascara ran down the sides of her face like it did when that time they were nineteen and carefree and splitting a bottle of Jack, both laid out on their small patio, lying side-by-side staring up at the city-lit night sky and laughing at anything and everything in the world.

These things are the hardest for him to remember. They cut him deeper. They remind him that Roa really did exist once upon a time as a living, breathing human being who always had Daniel’s back. She isn’t only a dead woman that Daniel didn’t try hard enough to save. She was real. She had lived, and he had been privileged to know her but not anymore.

“That’s a load of shit, Daniel,” says Minhyun. His voice wavers, and he draws in a sharp breath to stave off the tears that are threatening to spill over his lashes. He tightens his hand on Daniel’s knee, like Minhyun needs the physical contact as much as Daniel does. “You didn’t kill Roa. You couldn’t have known you’d come back to that. Nobody could’ve.”

Daniel bites down hard on his bottom lip. He so badly wants to contradict Minhyun, because he should have known. He knew how Hancheol was, how Hancheol treated Roa. It really is all of Daniel’s fault.

“What happened to Hancheol?” asks Jonghyun, purposefully directing the conversation elsewhere.

Daniel looks over at Jonghyun and sees that he, too, looks like he might start crying. Daniel wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all. He would if the situation weren’t so somber. He hadn’t come over here to make anybody cry. He hasn’t ever wanted anybody, much less Minhyun or Jonghyun or any of his friends, to feel the hurt that he carries around every day. 

“He’s dead.”

“Good,” snaps Minhyun.

He looks every bit like he means it, and Jonghyun nods his head agreeably. Daniel tries for a smile, because he shares their opinion. He is glad Hancheol is dead. It doesn’t hurt as much to talk about this part of Hancheol’s role in the story, even if it ended shitty.

“Yeah, um, it was a car accident about a month after Roa’s death. He wasn’t even ever charged with anything.”

Minhyun and Jonghyun wince in synchronization, like their responses are directly linked together through some unknown force. Daniel takes a mental step back from the narrative of Roa, and he considers his friends before him. He doesn’t know how he’s been so blind to Jonghyun’s adoration of Minhyun all this time, because it’s stark before him now. 

“The world’s just fucked up sometimes, I guess,” adds Daniel in a closing statement.

He is partially talking about Roa and Hancheol and how there was really never any justice for her death other than the comfort that the monster who had stolen her life had lost his own not too long thereafter. Mostly, Daniel is referring to how love is fucked up, how one person can fall head over heels in love with another but the other not care a thing in the world to return it. How Minhyun is Jonghyun’s entire world, but Minhyun is so hung up on Seongwoo that he himself can’t see anything beyond Seongwoo. How Daniel fell so fast and so hard for Jihoon, but Jihoon left so easily.

Maybe it is this city that is fucking everything up. Daniel lost Roa here. Jonghyun has spent forever chasing after Minhyun only to lose him to Seongwoo, their best friend. Daniel fell in love here himself, and Jihoon fucked him up, and maybe it is this city that draws out the worst in people. It is time he leaves it. He has nothing left to give it. He is tired of letting it take everything away from him and from his friends. He is so, so done being haunted by Jihoon and by memories of Roa.

He has done the last thing he needed to do. He has made his amends with Minhyun. He has given him the story he has owed to Minhyun since that very first night when Minhyun found him drunk off his ass in the park. Daniel done right by Minhyun finally, and it is time that he move on.

It is time he left.

Minhyun seems to read his mind. He stands up just as Daniel does and draws him into a hug before Daniel can say his farewells. Daniel melts into it, and he tries not to think about how this might be the last time in a long time that he will get to enjoy one of Minhyun’s hugs. He is moving away tomorrow. Minhyun still has a job that flies him all around the world, and it is going to be hard finding time to get together in the spaces between their lives.

Daniel breaks the hug first, feeling the urge to sob over this goodbye. He won’t allow himself to, because this isn’t goodbye. Not really. They’ll still talk over the phone and through video calls. People like Minhyun, they’re worth keeping around. So he turns to hug Jonghyun as well, holding out his hand to pull Jonghyun up into his arms. He holds onto Jonghyun extra tightly. He wants to tell Jonghyun that it will all be all right, this thing Jonghyun has with Minhyun. Daniel doesn’t say a word, because Minhyun is right here, and Daniel doesn’t believe it himself.

He steps back from Jonghyun, and they share a sad smile between them, finding solace in the common ground they have nurtured together through their heartaches. It is sad that they never really, truly understood one another until it was too late. But there is no sense in tarrying on it. There is nothing Daniel can do now except go back home and pack up the last of his belongings. Jonghyun and Minhyun walk him to the door, because that is what one does with friends that one isn’t not going to see again for a long time.

Daniel reaches for the doorknob, and Minhyun’s voice stops him.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t ask, but, dammit, Daniel. I have to. Why don’t you just stay?”

Daniel freezes, his hand tightening on the doorknob. His body tenses. These are the words he so selfishly wanted to hear last night when Minhyun stormed out of his house instead. It hurts more than Daniel had expected, getting what he wanted but not being able to oblige the request.

“Please,” adds Minhyun. It is a flat-out beg like Daniel has never hear fall from Minhyun’s lips, but Minhyun is losing his best friend to a whole new life. “Just stay.”

Daniel can’t bring himself to turn around to look at Minhyun, because his answer has to be no, but he isn’t sure he can say it to Minhyun’s face. Daniel can’t stay here.

“I’m sorry, Min ,” he says, and then he lets himself out of Minhyun’s house for the last time.

He doesn’t quite know how he makes it home. He takes the bus into the city then hails a cab to his house. He thinks about Minhyun’s plea the entire way, and it’s only through sheer will that he doesn’t turn on his heel and run back to Minhyun. But Daniel stands by his decision. This city isn’t good for him. He has a chance to get out of it—a chance to move a place where he can finally start picking up the pieces of his shattered life that were left in the wake of Jihoon two weeks ago—and he has to take it. He will go insane if he doesn’t.

He pays the cab driver his fare before he gets out. He walks deliberately up to his front door. He thinks about all the things he has left to do in this place, about all of the things he isn’t going to be able to pack up before he leaves tomorrow and about getting the house ready to sell and about a hundred other things that he won’t be able to settle before his move. He digs his keys out of his pocket, slips the right one into the lock, and lets himself inside.

He stops in the doorway, feet glued to the ground. The light is on in the living room, and Daniel knows for certain that he didn’t leave it on this morning. He hadn’t even bothered with it, still half-asleep as he had gone about his morning routine. The television is playing a game show that he can’t stomach any more, and there is a shiny metal key lying on Daniel’s coffee table.

There, seated on the couch like he never really left, is Jihoon in the flesh for the first time in over two and a half weeks.

Chapter 21  
Chapter Text  
Daniel has stepped into a sort of alternate universe. There is no other explanation for it. There is no other reason for Jihoon on his couch right now in the living room that is stuffed full of boxes containing Daniel’s life to be hauled away to a brand new city. Daniel is vaguely aware of the icy February air seeping into the house through the open door, so he steps far enough inside to shut it. It is something normal to do, anyway. It is something to balance out the absolute absurdity of the picture of Jihoon right here in front of him—a picture he hasn’t seen in over two and a half weeks. 

“So it’s true then,” says Jihoon, daring to break the silence. He sounds just like he never left. His voice is soft in the serenity of the house. He is looking at Daniel like he is looking straight through Daniel to his very soul. It is hard to equate this man who is so in control of himself right now with the man who had cried over the phone to Daniel just yesterday morning. “You really are leaving.”

Daniel nods. He is pretty sure that much is evident from the boxes surrounding the pair of them. He can’t quite find his voice, not now when faced with this reality. With Jihoon so real and so alive before him on his couch like he has every right to be there. The ghost of Jihoon—the apparition that has haunted Daniel throughout the city since the man himself left—merges back into the real thing before Daniel’s eyes. There is no need for a memory to haunt him now, not with Jihoon seated on his couch.

“And you weren’t going to tell anybody?”

“Oh, you’re a great one to talk,” snaps Daniel, and he has finally found his voice. It is nowhere as painful as he might have expected it would be to be faced with Jihoon again. Maybe there isn’t much left for him to feel after the emotional rollercoaster that has been his life since the morning he woke up alone in a bed that smelled like sex. All that is left is the indignation, a flash of humiliation, that he wasn’t enough for Jihoon to stay. That has been the kicker the entire time. “You’re the one who left me—or have you forgotten?”

Jihoon’s face clouds over. He bites his bottom lip. He doesn’t have an immediate response, not like Daniel might have expected him to. He is a million miles away from the man who had shoved Daniel up against the doorframe of Minhyun’s guest bedroom, fierce and unabashed in his frenzy. It has been a long time since that moment, but it is burned into Daniel’s mind. Into Daniel’s soul. He suspects it is in Jihoon’s, as well.

Jihoon shifts uncomfortably. He drops his gaze from Daniel to his own lap. He looks a little like a chastened school kid. Daniel takes the opportunity of Jihoon’s distraction to really look at the man before him. The bright overhead light does nothing to hide the truth. There are bags underneath Jihoon’s eyes like he hasn’t slept in two and a half weeks, and there is a tense set to his shoulders that has never been there before.

Somewhere deep down inside, Daniel’s selfishly glad he isn’t the only one who has been through hell.

“Kinda hard to forget when you’re always there, isn’t it?” murmurs Jihoon, but the game show has been silenced, and there is nothing else in the entire house to hinder his words from reaching Daniel’s ears. He seems to grow brave hearing his own voice. He dares to look at Daniel and meet his eyes again, and that man who illicitly kissed him in Minhyun’s guest bedroom is back.

There is a fire burning in Jihoon’s eyes, one that Daniel hasn’t seen since that very first night when Daniel’s mouth tasted like vodka and fire but Jihoon kissed him anyway. Jihoon stands now from the couch, and he stalks across the room to draw up short of Daniel. Up close, he looks even more run-down. His skin is paler than it should be, especially given the amount of sun he had been exposed to in Korea. His bottom lip is raw and chapped, as if he’s spent his entire time away chewing on it.

Daniel wants to kiss him. He shouldn’t want to, not with the past week and a half between them, but he does. The realization nearly brings him to his knees. Everything crashes over him at once—all of the heartache, the empty feeling in his chest when he woke that awful morning to find Jihoon already gone, the way Jihoon haunted him from half of a world away.

It is only him and Jihoon left.

“Tell me to stop,” murmurs Jihoon, and his lips are coming nearer to Daniel’s like he is reading his mind.

“Not on your fucking life. Get on with it.”

Jihoon chuckles—maybe it’s a hiccup—at his own words from two and a half weeks ago being used against him. There is no time left to decipher his reaction. Jihoon’s lips crash against Daniel’s, and everything else ceases to exist. The world might as well stop turning.

It is everything Daniel remembers it was, and it is so much more. Their mouths slot together like they have lost no time at all between them. Jihoon moans into the kiss, falling into Daniel even more as the tension finally leaves his shoulders. It creates a new angle. Daniel likes how he has to tilt his head down ever-so-slightly to keep their lips together. He dares to sneak his tongue into Jihoon’s mouth, and he is rewarded with a fight for dominance. He hasn’t been kissed this good in a while. It spreads a fire all over his body. 

He moves his hands to cup Jihoon’s buttocks, and he draws the man closer to him. Their cocks harden against each other, separated only by the clothes they’re still wearing. Daniel still has his bulky winter jacket on. Jihoon’s fingers are working at the zip. He shoves it off Daniel’s shoulders impatiently, like it has personally offended him. Daniel’s button-up shirt goes with the jacket in the next second. They pool in the floor at his feet, and Daniel is left naked from the waist up.

Jihoon’s hands roam all over his skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. Daniel shivers against it. He breaks their kiss so that he can catch his breath. He hasn’t been kissed like this in so, so long. He has forgotten how to regulate the flow of oxygen into and out of his lungs in the period of Jihoon’s absence. He had forgotten just how effortlessly Jihoon can take his breath away. Those are the things that are so easy to lose when survival is much more important.

He pants against Jihoon, and he isn’t embarrassed at all that he is out of breath. Jihoon is equally so. Daniel uses the pause to his advantage, curling his fingers underneath the hem of Jihoon’s shirt and pulling it off over the man’s head. They’re equally naked now. Daniel’s fingers run along Jihoon’s ribcage until he reaches the patch of sensitive skin just below Jihoon’s armpits. He presses the pads of his thumbs there. Jihoon trembles, and it is so devastatingly familiar that the arousal pooling in Daniel’s belly intensifies tenfold.

Jihoon goes in for another kiss. Daniel lets him, opening his mouth like he knows Jihoon likes. It’s frenzied between them, desperate almost. Jihoon’s hands go for Daniel’s belt. He undoes it without even looking. Jihoon deepens the kiss, and he works his hands until he can slip one into Daniel’s trousers. He wraps his fingers purposefully around Daniel’s cock, holding it with just the right amount of pressure to elicit a moan from Daniel’s lips. He tugs once, lowering his hand until his pinky finger rests against Daniel’s pelvis then drawing back up to the tip.

Daniel’s knees nearly buckle underneath him. He hasn’t been touched so intimately since the last time Jihoon and he did this. Anything he and Jaehwan did together pales in comparison to the feeling of Jihoon’s able hand around Daniel’s dick. Jihoon works it over like he has no other purpose in life. Daniel loses himself to Jihoon, breaking the kiss and dropping his head to Jihoon’s shoulder.

Jihoon swipes his thumb across the slit of Daniel’s cock. Daniel shivers full-bodied against him. He is only remaining upright thanks to Jihoon. He can do nothing except stare down at the beautiful sight of Jihoon’s hand around Daniel’s cock. His breathing becomes labored again. He has only just caught it, really, but Jihoon’s touch is almost too much.

It doesn’t take long before Daniel gasps and comes all over Jihoon’s fist. Jihoon works him through it until Daniel’s so sensitive that Jihoon’s touch hurts. He feebly slaps away Jihoon’s hand, and it falls easily to Jihoon’s side, leaving Daniel’s softened cock hanging out of the front of his work trousers.

Daniel draws in a deep breath and then another just to prove he can. It helps to clear his fuzzy mind. When the post-orgasmic haze finally begins to clear, he reaches for Jihoon’s hard cock, still trapped in the man’s blue jeans. Jihoon stops him, wrapping his come-covered fingers around Daniel’s wrist.

“We should talk,” he says, holding Daniel’s gaze. “Sungwoon says we should talk, and so do Minhyun and Jonghyun, and so does Seongwoo.”

Daniel makes a face, wrinkling his nose, and says, slightly humorous but meaning it all the same, “Way to kill the mood.”

Jihoon lets out a short laugh. Daniel grins in response, still riding the high of his post-orgasm bliss. Jihoon is hard against him. He wants to return the favor, but Jihoon steps away from him, separating them. Jihoon wipes his soiled hand on the thigh of his jeans. There is an air of reluctance about his movements. Daniel knows the sentiment all too well. He tucks himself back in then does back up his trousers. He follows Jihoon to the couch anyway and sits opposite him, turning his body to face him.

The walls seem to close in on them. Neither one speaks, but Daniel can hear Seongwoo’s voice in his head asking did you and Jihoon even talk? He imagines that, maybe, he isn’t alone right now. That Jihoon is seated across from him with their friends’ words echoing in his mind, too. Camaraderie, however, doesn’t help him find his voice any easier.

Things are so broken between Jihoon and him that Daniel doesn’t even know where to start.

“I was drunk the first night we kissed,” says Jihoon finally. “I was so drunk that I couldn’t even see straight, but I could see you. You and your perfect smile and your contagious laugh and your all-around show-stealing personality. You were every-fucking-where, and by the time you stumbled upstairs, I’d already convinced myself that you were nothing more than an illusion. A figment of my imagination. But the thing about fantasies is that—well, you were never that good in my dreams. I knew I’d fucked up. I’d mixed fantasy with reality. I was so mortified I had to get away.”

“You left me hanging,” responds Daniel. He blushes a little, and the color in his cheeks is easily captured in the bright light. He thinks maybe this is the point where he would normally turn away, hide his face. He doesn’t. “Quite literally, I might add.”

“Can you really blame me?” screeches Jihoon. He gives Daniel a dubious look, his own cheeks burning. “I’d just made a fool of myself in front of you. I—I rutted against you like a bitch in heat. I’m pretty sure that alone killed the mood.”

“I thought it was kind of hot,” admits Daniel, because they are meant to be talking now, and that means they should be honest with one another. He doesn’t have anything to lose, anyway. He is set to leave in less than twenty-four hours from now. Besides, it isn’t much of an admission. Daniel is sure he has made it quite clear how he gets off on watching Jihoon come apart at the seams.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know that then.”

It is true. He didn’t. Daniel has never told him otherwise. There is a lot that has slipped through the spaces between them. Maybe a little too much to salvage. But sitting here on the couch with Jihoon an arm’s length away, Daniel feels a smidge of hope that he hasn’t had since the morning he woke up alone. He is just afraid it’s a little too late.

“It fucking hurt, you know, seeing you with Jaehwan,” says Jihoon after a beat. He is going all out all at once, like he thinks it will hurt less that way. A bit like ripping off a band-aid. Daniel wants to kiss him again. “There were pictures all over the damn place, and you just looked so—you looked so happy that I couldn’t stand it.”

“Happy?” Daniel repeats with a snort. He thinks he might like Jihoon’s tactic. There is no sense in dancing around the truth for dignity’s sake. That is what got them here in the first place. Daniel knows what Jihoon looks like when he comes, and he knows how it feels to be intimate with Jihoon, and he thinks that has to amount to something in the bigger picture of things. That has to matter when it comes to things like baring his all to Jihoon right now. “I was far from happy. I couldn’t—Jesus, Jihoon. You were everywhere, you realize this? Like I couldn’t go anywhere in this city without seeing you, and it was messing with my mind. It was fucking up my psyche.”

Jihoon quiet in Daniel’s admission. Daniel isn’t done yet, and somehow Jihoon senses it. He is patient with Daniel. Listens to him like Daniel is the only person in the entire world. Maybe, just maybe, he really is to Jihoon. Because if Daniel is being completely, one hundred percent honest with himself, Jihoon is it for him. Right here, right now, forever and beyond. Jihoon has been for a while, probably ever since Jihoon shoved Daniel up against the doorframe in Minhyun’s guest room to kiss him for the first time. It is a terrifying idea, especially when a future might not exist for them.

“Jaehwan was—for the longest time, he was the only thing keeping your ghost at bay. The only thing keeping me from going off the deep end after you left. When I was with him, I didn’t see you as much. Or, at least, I didn’t think I did, but you’re larger than life, you know. You were everywhere, even with him after a while. You were so much ingrained into my soul that I couldn’t shake you. Not really. Then I slept with Jaehwan, and it was awful, but all I could really see was you.”

Daniel reaches forward and dares to take Jihoon’s hands into his. They haven’t touched this entire time, not since they broke apart to sit on the couch. Even now, the contact they share between one another isn’t much, but Daniel craves Jihoon like his lungs need oxygen. He tries not to think about the flight he is due to take tomorrow that will carry him far, far away from here. Away from this moment. Away from Jihoon again.

“It’s you. It’s always been you, and I know I haven’t said it. I’ve been a downright bastard, but so’ve you, and I don’t guess I really realized how much I love you until it was too late,” Daniel says. It is scary to admit this, but he needs to say it. He is supposed to be leaving tomorrow afternoon for his brand new life. He doesn’t want to leave things as they are between him and Jihoon, not without putting everything out there. “I was going to tell you that night before you left. I was all ready to say it, but I was too fucking terrified of what it meant.”

Jihoon is quiet for a moment. Daniel has nothing else to say. His thoughts are all jumbled. There are a million other issues they need to work through, but so help him, he can’t remember a single one beyond this one right here. It is the most important one: the fact that he loves Jihoon, and Jihoon loves him back, but it might not be enough. Daniel drops his gaze to his and Jihoon’s hands. He can’t help but to admire the way they look interlocked together.

“And now?” prompts Jihoon. When Daniel doesn’t immediately answer or even look up at him, he adds, “Do you still mean it?”

“I wasn’t enough of a reason for you to stay.”

“You were.”

“It didn’t feel like it.”

Daniel glances back up at him, but Jihoon isn’t looking at him now. Instead, his gaze has shifted to the boxes piled around Daniel’s living room. A troubled expression crosses Jihoon’s face. It stays there, taking refuge. Daniel thinks of the way Jihoon had looked silhouetted in his doorway against the angry winter rain when Daniel had asked him to stay for the very first time. It feels like an eon ago now.

“Am I enough of a reason?” asks Jihoon, turning back to Daniel. He chews anxiously on his bottom lip. He looks vulnerable in a way that Daniel never really thought was possible. “If I asked you to stay, would you?”

“That’s not fair,” says Daniel, because it’s not. Jihoon can’t ask Daniel to stay for him when Jihoon himself couldn’t stay for Daniel—when Jihoon himself couldn’t even wake Daniel up for a kiss goodbye before he left. When Jihoon couldn’t promise Daniel that he would come back home to Daniel. It just reminds Daniel of how broken things are between them, about how things were never really fixed in the first place, about how scary the idea of trying to put themselves back together really is.

Jihoon is braver than Daniel in the end.

“Daniel, stay for me. Please.”

Jihoon’s eyes are big and wide and hopeful, and they’re brimming with tears, prepared to fall any moment. Daniel swallows around the lump in the back of his throat. He looks down at the space on the couch between them, scarce though it may be. He has a flight booked for tomorrow. Ed expects him to talk to a brand new city the day after that, and his entire life is packed away in boxes right now.

It is too late.

Daniel retracts his hand from Jihoon’s. The contact is just too much. There is a sharp intake of breath in Daniel’s silence, and Daniel knows he doesn’t need to say anything. Knows Jihoon is reading the answer clear in his hesitation. On his face.

“Then give me tonight,” pleads Jihoon, repeating Daniel’s words from so long ago when it had been Daniel asking Jihoon for one last night. He reaches for both of Daniel’s hands. Daniel doesn’t move, just lets Jihoon take what he wants like he always does. “Give me this, at least.”

Daniel is powerless to say no. He always has been when it comes to Jihoon. This time is no different. He turns his hands over so that he can thread his fingers through Jihoon’s, and he tries not to think about how right it feels with their palms pressed together.

He squeezes Jihoon’s hands, and he stands up. Jihoon has to follow him. Daniel kisses him in lieu of an actual response, lets something other than silence speak for him this time. Jihoon melts into the kiss, but Daniel pulls away before it can go any farther. He isn’t having sex on the couch. If they’re going to do this—if they’re going to give each other this one last night—they’re going to do it in the bed that Daniel hasn’t been able to sleep in since Jihoon left.

That is where Jihoon really belongs.

That is where Daniel wants to remember him.

Daniel lets go of one of Jihoon’s hands so that he can lead the way to the bedroom. He thinks of the last time they did this, when they had left a trail of clothes in their frenzy of passion. It is different now. More somber. Because this really is the last time.

Tomorrow feels much closer than it ever has in Daniel’s entire life.

The bedroom is relatively untouched by Daniel’s packing. He had put together a suitcase full of clothes, and that was it. It is the one room he couldn’t bear to take with him, the one room that reminds him too much of Jihoon. Now, Jihoon is back in it, and the walls don’t feel as suffocating as they have for the past week and a half.

Daniel pauses before the bed, looking down at the pristine press of the covers draped over it, and he wonders if it is obvious to Jihoon that he has not been in it since the morning he woke up to find Jihoon gone. He wonders how it is going to feel tomorrow to be the one to leave this time. He wonders if it will be any easier to walk away than it was to wake up alone.

Jihoon steps up behind him, and he presses a soft kiss to the bare skin of Daniel’s neck, right below where Daniel’s shirt collar might rest. Daniel shivers, snapping his attention away from the bed to the man he is taking there. He turns around to face Jihoon so that he can draw him into another kiss, hungry for Jihoon’s mouth against his.

They fall unceremoniously to the bed, lips still pressed together. It is like a fight to the end. It is Daniel who breaks away first. He kisses a trail across Jihoon’s jaw and down his neck. Jihoon scoots up to the head of the bed. Daniel follows him. His lips never leave Jihoon’s skin. He wants to make a mark here at the base of Jihoon’s neck, wants to leave a piece of himself behind that will stay well beyond tonight, so he does. Jihoon gasps, throwing back his head to expose more of his neck to Daniel.

Jihoon runs his hands all over Daniel’s naked skin as if he is trying to imprint this very moment in his mind forever. He touches Daniel with familiarity, and when he brushes across the waistband of Daniel’s trousers, he is fearless as he works open the button and zipper so that he can get his hand inside. Daniel shudders as Jihoon’s fingers brush against his cock. He is still feeling the aftereffects of his last orgasm, the lingering tingling sensation that is buzzing underneath his skin, but his cock thickens at the merest touch of Jihoon’s hand. 

Daniel knows what he wants in this moment in time. Knows what he wants to remember. Knows what he wants to do again if this is his last thing between them forever. He dives in for another kiss, brief and searing. He nips at Jihoon’s bottom lip before pulling away only far enough to speak.

“Let me eat you out.”

Jihoon shudders against him, as gone for the idea now as he had been the last time they had tumbled together in Daniel’s sheets. Daniel is eager. He can still remember the last time they had done this, when he had taken Jihoon apart so beautifully. It is one of his more favorite memories, and he will never forget it for as long as he lives. Now, he gets to do it again.

He kisses his way down Jihoon’s body, gently sucking marks into his skin like it is his mission in life to leave a part of him behind. He takes great care with each of the marks, sucking until Jihoon moans above him then licking back over the pain. Jihoon bucks against him, trying for friction but finding none. Daniel grins against the skin of Jihoon’s hip, working over his latest mark.

He brings his hand up to ghost over Jihoon’s cock. It is already leaking with precome. Daniel is pretty sure the slightest of touch is liable to send Jihoon toppling over the edge of orgasm. He is tempted right now to press a kiss to the underside of Jihoon’s cock, to run his tongue up the shaft, to take the head into his mouth. He would like so, so much to take him apart right now. But he doesn’t. He wants Jihoon to get off to the feel of Daniel’s tongue against his rim.

Daniel grabs Jihoon’s hip, the one he just marked up, and gently turns Jihoon onto his front. Jihoon is trembling with desire. His cock bobs up and down underneath him, the head of it making a mess of the bed sheet. Daniel helps him get a pillow underneath his stomach so that he doesn’t have to hold himself up on his shaking limbs any longer.

Daniel takes a moment to admire the sight he is presented with: Jihoon, legs splayed open, cock hard underneath him. It is almost too much in the way all things with Jihoon always are. Daniel thinks he could come from this sight alone. He doesn’t want to. He reaches into the drawer of his bedside table and pulls out the lube and a condom. It is the best occurrence of déjà vu he has ever experienced.

He sets the condom and lube both aside as he returns his full, undivided attention to Jihoon. He kisses the base of Jihoon’s spine, because he is in love with the small of Jihoon’s back as much as he is with the rest of Jihoon. It is intimate. It is comforting, and Jihoon shivers underneath him. He continues peppering kisses there as he gently cups Jihoon’s right buttock. He doesn’t do much more for a few seconds, allowing Jihoon to get used to him being there again.

Jihoon relaxes under him, and he pushes back into Daniel’s hand, impatient for what is about to happen. Daniel chuckles into his last kiss before he pulls away, setting back on his knees to admire Jihoon before him once more. He wants to take his time with this, to properly experience this one last time, but he can’t wait to get his tongue inside Jihoon. To feel Jihoon fall so beautifully apart underneath him.

Last time, Jihoon’s skin had been tinged pink. The tension had been thick between them as they had blazed into a whole new territory of intimacy. This time, it is different. Jihoon is lax before him, and this is all a little bittersweet, knowing that, come morning, Daniel will be well on his way to his brand new life.

But Daniel pushes those thoughts aside, because they still have tonight.

He spreads Jihoon’s cheeks apart, not bothering with any hindering fanfare. Jihoon is as eager for this as Daniel, and Daniel is tired of denying them what they both want. He leans forward, licking his own lips in anticipation. His breath ghosts across Jihoon’s hole, and he pauses, just like last time.

“I can stop, sweetheart,” he says, grinning and praying to every single deity that could possibly exist that Jihoon doesn’t say no. He doesn’t think Jihoon will—doesn’t even think that is even an option, really—but Daniel has never wanted something so bad in his life as he does this in this moment in time, and it would be just like Jihoon to want to fuck up Daniel’s life for old time’s sake.

“Not on your fucking life,” says Jihoon, a little breathless, but grinning back at Daniel all the same. He, too, is remembering the last time. Daniel can see it in his eyes, and it steals the air from Daniel’s lungs. Makes Daniel’s heart skip at least four beats in a row. “Get on with it.”

So Daniel does. He dives down, licking across Jihoon’s hole. Teasing him just like he knows Jihoon likes. He isn’t disappointed. Jihoon gasps out a moan, and he falls forward on his forearms, his face pressed against the pillow. His breaths come in short pants as Daniel does his best to take Jihoon apart by the tip of his tongue.

It is intimate in all of the ways that Daniel has missed over the past two and a half weeks are. He feels powerful. Like the entire world is at his command, and it is. Jihoon is his entire world. His beginning and his end. And right now, Daniel is almost drunk on how good is he making Jihoon feel.

He works Jihoon over with his tongue, reaching around Jihoon to tease his fingers along the shaft of Jihoon’s cock. He knows that Jihoon is on the brink of an orgasm. Pride wells up in him that he is privileged enough to have learned Jihoon inside and out, and he never wants to forget anything about Jihoon, much less what it takes to reduce him to a quivering mess of moans and pleasure.

He wraps his hand around Jihoon’s cock, gripping it properly, and all it takes it a little bit of pressure to send Jihoon tipping over the edge. Jihoon comes, moaning Daniel’s name into the pillow, and he makes a mess of the sheet underneath him, and Daniel licks around his hole until Jihoon is too sensitive all over. Until Jihoon makes a half-hearted attempt to push him away, and Daniel falls back immediately. He stares at Jihoon’s spit-slickened hole, how it glistens in the faint light, and he thinks that he has never seen a more beautiful sight in his entire life.

Jihoon pants raggedly, his breaths short gasps that are partially muffled by his pillow. The after waves of his orgasm pulsate underneath his skin. His hand reaches out for Daniel. He is too blissed-out to do much more than wave his arm around in the vain hope that he might accidentally make contact. It is Daniel who reaches forward, who steadies him, and who gives him what he wants. Jihoon tugs him nearer. Daniel follows, draping himself over Jihoon’s back until they are flush together. His cock is heavy against the curve of Jihoon’s ass. Jihoon shivers.

“Didn’t I tell you not to stop?” asks Jihoon. His voice is wrecked. He tries for snark, but he doesn’t quite reach it, still too euphoric in the aftermath of his orgasm. “You promised me tonight.”

I did, thinks Daniel, and he wishes he could promise Jihoon forever instead.

“You’re wasting time,” adds Jihoon after a beat.

He pushes back against Daniel, dragging Daniel’s cock farther down the curve of his ass. He sucks in a sudden breath, still a little too sensitive despite his words. There is hardly any space between him and Daniel, but it is enough to allow him to turn over, so he does. He grins up at Daniel, eyes shining with earth-shattering desire. He bucks his hips forward, his cock rubbing against Daniel’s.

“Fuck me.”

It is a command that Daniel goes straight to Daniel’s cock. He thinks that maybe he could come from it alone. He wills back his orgasm. They have only tonight, and Jihoon is right: they are wasting time. He doesn’t need to waste anymore coming at only the idea of fucking Jihoon when he can do it for real—when he will never get the chance to do it again.

Daniel presses a bittersweet kiss to Jihoon’s lips, quick but passionate. He pushes aside all thoughts that this really is the last time he will ever be privileged enough to share his bed with Jihoon—that he will ever be lucky enough to share his bed with Jihoon—and he leans back to sit on his knees. Jihoon spreads his legs now that he has the room to do so. Daniel takes a moment to admire the sight he’s presented with.

He wants to burn this moment in his memory forever.

Jihoon doesn’t need much more prep, given that he is pliant and open from Daniel’s tongue only a few moments ago. Daniel still slicks up his fingers with lube and works Jihoon open one-by-one until Jihoon is impatient with desire once more. Daniel is half-afraid that Jihoon might still be too sensitive for what they are about to do—that he might actually be too sensitive for everything at the moment—but he doesn’t stop. He can’t, given the choice, and Jihoon is begging him not to.

He rolls the condom on with lube-slickened fingers. He is trembling so badly with need that it takes Jihoon’s steady hands to help him get it on properly. Then he slicks himself up with a little more lube. He doesn’t want to hurt Jihoon. He doesn’t want Jihoon to associate their last night together as anything other than beautiful, because that is how Daniel wants to remember it, too.

He presses the tip of his cock against Jihoon’s hole. He pauses. The air around them is thick. This moment feels more important than any Daniel has ever lived through in his entire life, and he wishes it would last forever. He wishes he could stay here on the brink of their intimacy until the end of times just so he will never have to know what it is like for this all to be over. Because he knows he is not going to last very long once he finally plunges forward, and Jihoon probably won’t last very long at all, and then that will be it. That will be the end.

Jihoon meets his eyes, and he offers him a smug grin, and Daniel barks out a laugh as he pushes forward. Leave it to Jihoon to be cocky in the middle of sex. The grin drops from Jihoon’s face as he tenses just like last time. He relaxes in the next second, though. Daniel doesn’t stop until his hips are pressed flush against Jihoon and he can go no farther. He stops.

It is almost too much, being inside Jihoon again after so long of a time. It is even worse as the mantra of this is the last time cycles through his mind, nearly consuming him. Daniel can’t take it—almost pulls out entirely and calls it quits. He falls forward instead, his lips crashing against Jihoon’s, and he kisses Jihoon like there is no tomorrow. Because there isn’t, for them at least.

Jihoon kisses back just as desperately. His cock starts to harden again between them, and Daniel finally starts moving inside of him, slowly at first because he can’t handle any faster. Daniel’s hands find Jihoon’s in the folds of the sheet he laying on. He threads their fingers together, clinging as tight as he can to Jihoon’s hands in the hopes that they’ll never have to let go. In the hopes that this will never end.

He grows restless with his own pace, and Jihoon squirms underneath him, their lips never parting. Daniel speeds up, pushing in and pulling out almost in the same motion until nothing exists except his cock inside of Jihoon and their tongues dancing together. The end is coming too soon. Daniel wants to put it off as long as possible, but he can’t.

“I love you,” gasps Daniel against Jihoon’s mouth, because he has to say these words. He has to stamp them on this moment forever. He will never get another chance. “I fucking love you, Jihoon Park.”

Jihoon cries out, coming untouched between them. His come splatters up his own chest and against Daniel’s. It is this sensation that pushes Daniel over the edge again. Daniel is coming in the condom, his thrusts jagged and untimed until they’re nothing at all, and it is just Daniel softening inside of Jihoon.

Daniel doesn’t pull away immediately. It is almost like if he never moves, this moment will never end. Tomorrow will never come, and he will never jet off to another city halfway across the country from this beautiful man underneath him. In a perfect world, that is how things would work.

This world isn’t perfect, but the words Jihoon breathes like a sacred oath in the next second are.

“I love you, too, Daniel. I love you, too.”

Chapter 22  
Notes:  
Big thanks to everybody who has stuck with this story and to everybody who has left such lovely feedback in whatever manner. I hope this has been as enjoyable to read as it was to write.

Here's your happy ending. :)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text  
Daniel has never hated four-thirty as much as he does right now. His cell phone is blaring his first alarm, but he makes no move to turn it off. He has his arms wrapped around Jihoon. He doesn’t want to let go, because the moment that he does, this is all over. He will never hold Jihoon in his arms again. It’s a somber thought, and it twists at Daniel’s heart, and when his phone rings again nine minutes later as a second alarm, he holds Jihoon even tighter.

“You don’t want to be late,” murmurs Jihoon into the skin of Daniel’s neck where his mouth is pressed.

The for your last day goes unspoken, but Daniel hears it loud and clear. Jihoon sounds sleepy. Daniel feels a little guilty for waking him up. He doesn’t apologize, though, because he is selfish. He is glad for this precious time with Jihoon. Come tomorrow morning and the one after that and the one after that and every one thereafter, he won’t have Jihoon in his bed. In his arms. In his life.

Daniel doesn’t want to go to work. It feels like every single Monday morning he has ever faced all piled into one right in front of him. He wishes time would stop forever so that he won’t have to leave this bed. So that he won’t have to leave Jihoon. Because in the morning light—with the words I love you shared between them—Daniel realizes he was wrong last night: Jihoon is enough of a reason to stay.

But Daniel is still expected to wake up in a brand new city tomorrow morning.

Life isn’t fair. It is even less fair when Daniel’s phone beeps with the third alarm, and he knows the car is on its way. He has to get up and face reality. He has to let go of Jihoon for the last time.

It is the hardest thing Daniel has ever done in his life, untangling himself from Jihoon to crawl out of bed. He does it by some miracle. He refuses to look back at Jihoon as he makes his way to the bathroom, fearful that he won’t be strong enough to continue on with his morning routine if he does.

He shuts the bathroom door behind him, but he doesn’t lock it. He showers as quickly as he can. When he gets out, he dries off with the towel that he has used all week. He brushes his teeth completely naked, his towel wrapped around his shoulders. The mirror is too foggy for him to see his reflection in it, but he doesn’t really care to look. He is sure he has bruises all over his skin from last night. These are marks he’ll wear with pride until they fade into nothingness.

He hangs the towel up to dry before he leaves the bathroom and walks naked into his bedroom. Jihoon is missing from the bed, but he typically is. A wave of nostalgia washes over Daniel. He staggers to the edge of the bed and collapses onto it, his head in his hands. He doesn’t want this to end, this domesticity that he has fallen into with Jihoon. It ended once, and it nearly killed Daniel. He doesn’t want to let it go again.

But he has to. It’s too late to go back now. He will be on a plane to a brand new city come this evening.

He dresses in his bedroom but doesn’t bother doing up the laces of his shoes. His phone beeps with the notification that the car is waiting outside. It can wait a couple of minutes longer. Daniel makes his way into the kitchen. It is in a pitiful state with all of the boxes piled high everywhere, and Jihoon himself looks out of place wearing nothing except a pair of boxers and Daniel’s old university t-shirt. It’s been stretched out through years of wear and tear, and the neck of it hangs loose to show off the myriad of bright red marks Daniel had trailed down Jihoon’s body only a few hours before. They’re stark underneath the harsh overhead lights in the kitchen. They’re beautiful. Jihoon is beautiful.

“You don’t want to be late,” says Jihoon, his voice soft and filled with just as much dread as Daniel himself feels.

I don’t want to leave, thinks Daniel, but it isn’t kind of him to say that to Jihoon. Not when Jihoon himself had asked Daniel to stay last night. Not when Daniel can’t stay.

“Here’s your coffee,” says Jihoon, as if he is terrified of the silence that stretched between them. Maybe he thinks if he keeps talking, this moment will never end. Daniel certainly hopes so. “It’s just how you like it.”

Daniel doesn’t doubt it. He takes the thermos from Jihoon’s hand, because that is what he is supposed to do. He crowds into Jihoon’s space, and he doesn’t move away. He doesn’t want to move away. Ever.

“I love you,” says Daniel.

Jihoon winces. After a beat, so does Daniel, but he doesn’t want to take back the words. He can’t regret the truth, and he has never meant anything more in his entire life. Jihoon deserves to be told that he is loved. Daniel wishes he had the rest of forever to tell him over and over again, but he doesn’t. He only has this morning. He is going to make the best of it.

“Will you be here when I get back?” asks Daniel.

Jihoon smiles sadly at him and shakes his head. “I’ll probably head over to Minhyun’s, and I—well, I can’t watch you walk away from me twice in one day.”

Daniel nods. He bites his lips together, and he kind of wants to cry, but he doesn’t blame Jihoon. Daniel remembers how it felt waking up alone after the first time they had proper sex together and knowing that Jihoon wasn’t coming back to him. He had been wrong, of course. Jihoon did come back to him. But it doesn’t change how world-ending it had felt right in the heat of things.

“I can—I can call when I land?” suggests Daniel. He knows he is grasping for straws. He should be out the door already, seated in the car that will take him to the station for the very last time. He doesn’t move.

Jihoon looks like he might be the one to cry instead. He looks so sad, a frown forming on his lips. He is brave enough to meet Daniel’s eyes, and Daniel thinks he spies water building up in them. Daniel hates himself in this moment in time.

“Please, don’t make this any harder on me. I’m not sure how I’m going to handle losing you a second time—and this time for good. It’s, uh, probably best if we don’t, you know, keep in touch.”

Daniel draws in a ragged breath. Jihoon’s words feel like knives twisting in his heart, but he doesn’t blame Jihoon for wanting a clean break. It is the least he owes Jihoon for not being able to stay for him. Besides, even Daniel has to admit that the idea of being able to speak with Jihoon but not touch him, not even to hug him, sounds like the cruelest form of punishment Daniel could ever imagine.

There is nothing left for Daniel to say except, “I am so sorry, Jihoon.”

“We’ve never apologized to one another before, why start now?” challenges Jihoon. He smiles ruefully at Daniel. “We had a good run, I think. No need to be sorry for that.”

“You call this a good run? We danced around our feelings for a week, slept together, then spent the next two and a half weeks miserable without one another until you came back only for me to leave for another job halfway across the country.”

“Yeah, but you were mine and I was yours for just a little while somewhere along the way, and that was more than I thought I’d ever get.”

Daniel’s breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t know what to say underneath the crush of Jihoon’s monumental admission—underneath the weight of the idea that Jihoon loves him so much that he was willing to take whatever Daniel would give him and nothing else. Daniel is overcome with the desire to give Jihoon everything, because that is what Jihoon deserves, but it is too late for such promises.

Daniel merely kisses Jihoon instead. It’s a goodbye, Daniel knows, and he gives his all to Jihoon, and he wishes that he had more to give. He doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter. Jihoon kisses back just as passionate, just as fierce, just as desperate.

They part, because time isn’t on their side. Daniel’s phone beeps again, presumably for the final time, and Daniel knows this is it. Jihoon knows it, too. Neither one of them speak as they walk side-by-side to the door. Jihoon helps Daniel into his winter coat, and Daniel ducks back in for one final kiss.

It’s over too soon. Jihoon pulls back, and he smiles sadly at Daniel.

“I love you, too. Remember that, ok?” says Jihoon. “And remember me.”

“I’d sooner forget to breathe than forget you.”

It brings a smile to Jihoon’s lips, albeit a bittersweet one. Daniel wants to kiss him again, but he doesn’t allow himself to. He is already running late. By this point, he’ll be lucky to make it to the presenter’s chair before the countdown clock reaches zero. It isn’t exactly how he wanted to go out, if he’s honest with himself, but it takes a monumental effort to step back from Jihoon.

There are a thousand things that have gone unsaid between them. Daniel owes Jihoon the story of Roa as much as he had owed it to Minhyun, and Jihoon deserves to have heard it from Daniel personally, but he never will. This is the end. This is goodbye forever.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, way back in the tiny corner that isn’t self-destructing at the mere idea of this being the last of he and Jihoon together, Daniel acknowledges that he is being a little melodramatic. Jihoon isn’t dying or disappearing forever. Daniel can still keep tabs on Jihoon through social media and through Minhyun. He can drop in for visits twice a year or something.

But the thing about being an adult and moving to a brand new city is that Daniel knows everything will change. He knows that long distance isn’t really a thing that he’s good at. He knows that this right here—this moment in time—really is all that he has left.

He makes it all the way to the car and strapped into the backseat before he caves and looks back to get one last glimpse of Jihoon standing silhouetted in his doorway. Daniel can’t see his face from here, but maybe that’s for the best. Because if Jihoon is crying any at all, Daniel doesn’t think he could actually leave.

It’s hard enough trying to ignore the tears sliding down his own cheeks.

The ride across the city is the same as every single one before this one, and Daniel tries not to focus on the fact that this is the last time he’ll ever do this, too. He wipes at his eyes, trying to get himself under control before he has to go in front of the cameras. He doesn’t need to wake up the city looking like he has bawled his eyes out, even if that is nearly what he is doing.

The morning air is chilly. He thanks the driver for the ride. He pulls his coat tight around him as he hurries toward the front door. Inside, the building is much warmer. He strips himself of his outwear as he rides the elevator up to his floor. He glances at the metal reflection of himself before the elevator doors split open, and he hopes that he can write off the blotchiness in his cheeks as a result of the cold air of the winter morning.

The studio is in a buzz, which isn’t all that unexpected since the countdown clock has rounded twenty and is rapidly approaching zero. Daniel makes a beeline for the presenter’s seat, and he tries not to feel too nostalgic that this will be the last time he ever sits in this very spot. That this will be the last time he ever wakes this city.

Apeach the penguin is set up in its usual place, proud and obvious right next to Daniel’s nametag. Baekho must have set him up. Daniel reaches out to run his finger along the line of its crystal wing. He thinks of Apeach’s namesake, and he knows that he isn’t leaving Apeach behind. He can’t. He’s already leaving Jihoon in this city. He can’t leave the penguin, too.

“Hey, uh, don’t stray too far from the teleprompter, all right?” says Baekho, leaning over to speak in a low voice to Daniel as the countdown clock passes five. “The higher-ups are watching this morning, apparently, and Jisung wants everything to run extra smoothly.”

It is the first Daniel has heard of the executives watching this particular show. Usually, things like this are scheduled weeks ahead of time, and Jisung makes no less than four death threats to Daniel to persuade him against being late. It wouldn’t look good on the station if the cameras went live on Daniel nose diving into his chair. This time, however, there had been none.

Baekho straightens back up before Daniel can think to ask how the hell he missed that particular memo. The countdown clock reaches zero, and the cameras start to roll. Daniel smiles at camera two. He forces himself to focus on nothing except getting through this show—which is especially important given the current audience. He puts on his best game face.

“Good morning, good citizens of this fine city,” greets Daniel like it were any other day. He hopes that some of the blotchiness of his skin has faded away. That he doesn’t look too much like death warmed over underneath the harsh studio lighting. That nobody can tell he is hours away from leaving the love of his life behind forever.

Daniel freezes at that particular thought, his heart clenching painfully in his chest. The teleprompter moves forward, covering some kind of breaking news story in the city, but Daniel can’t bring himself to read it. Not in light of this world-ending realization.

He can’t leave.

Jihoon is the love of his life—and if Daniel’s life fell apart in the two and a half weeks they were separated, there is no way he will be able to survive in a brand new city alone forever.

The next words get caught in Daniel’s throat, but the teleprompter carelessly moves forward, directing Daniel farther into the news story. Daniel sits there in his presenter’s chair with his mouth gaping open and his entire world flipping upside down. Next to him, Baekho jumps in to save the story, and he narrates what’s on the screen as if it was his to do the entire time.

Daniel finds Seongwoo standing in the back of the room next to the door. It’s hard to see him in the dim lighting, but Daniel knows that Seongwoo is watching him like a hawk now. Daniel wonders if the realization is there plain on his face. If Seongwoo can see it now from across the room. If maybe Jihoon is watching Daniel’s show right now all cuddle up on Daniel’s couch in Daniel’s home where he belongs—if maybe he sees it, too.

For the first time since in his entire life, Daniel has the desire to walk off the set right now in the middle of filming. He loves being in front of a camera. Loves waking people up of a morning, giving them the latest news or gossip or goings-on in the city. He lives for it. There’s no place else he’d rather be during the hours from half past five to half past nine in the morning. Nowhere.

Except now there is.

Jihoon consumes Daniel’s entire being—not that he hasn’t since that very first time when he shoved Daniel up against the doorframe of Minhyun’s guest bedroom and crashed their lips together—and Daniel has to leave right now. He has to. He needs to see Jihoon. Needs to tell him that Daniel was wrong last night. That Jihoon is more than enough reason to stay.

“We’re left, of course, a burning question that I’m sure is on everybody’s mind,” says Baekho.

He is completely carrying the brand new segment, has been for the past five or ten minutes as Daniel has been trapped up in his life-changing realization. Truthfully, Daniel doesn’t exactly know what happened in the last one. He can’t think beyond the mantra of I need to talk to Jihoon right now. Nothing else matters. Nothing else exists.

Only it does, and in the next second, Baekho turns to Daniel. Three of the four cameras turn to him, too. That is the most warning Daniel has that he is about to be handed back the reins. He sluggishly glances at the teleprompter, almost as an afterthought, but it is suspiciously blank. That is odd. The higher-ups are supposed to be watching this show. Jisung always makes sure Daniel has the teleprompter to fall back on whenever the top executives are tuning into the station.

“Lucky for us, we’ve got our very own person on the inside,” says Baekho, looking at Daniel but speaking to the camera. There is a mirthful glint in Baekho’s eyes that makes the bottom of Daniel’s stomach drop out. Baekho is up to something. Daniel begins to suspect Baekho had lied earlier about the executives watching the show. “Tell us, Daniel. Why exactly did the great Minhyun Hwang and his team leave sunny Korea mere hours after the last shoot wrapped? Isn’t it his style to stay until the whole thing goes out with a bang? Unwind a bit after all that hard work?”

It is, thinks Daniel, whenever Minhyun’s emotionally constipated best friends aren’t self-destructing over one another.

Daniel doesn’t say that, of course. He doesn’t admit to the whole city that Minhyun had high-tailed it from one of the most beautiful places in the entire world just to show up on Daniel’s doorstep and slap some sense into him, angry at him for breaking Jihoon’s heart. For keeping secrets. For lying to Minhyun.

Or, rather, Daniel supposes that had been Minhyun’s intent when he had left Korea in the dead of night with a heart-broken Jihoon and the rest of their team in tow. Then Minhyun showed up to find out Daniel had gone behind his back again and was going to leave him behind, and Jihoon’s heart-ache took a backseat to Minhyun’s own pain.

The thing is that Daniel has a knack for hurting everybody around him.

“Maybe Minhyun missed my pretty face too much, ever think of that?” challenges Daniel. It comes out a little strained, but it’s hard to speak around the lump in his throat. He glances toward the clock on the wall above the door. He wishes it read nine-thirty already.

“So the rumors are true, then?” asks Sujeong.

She leans forward so that she can look around Baekho to see Daniel. There’s a devilish grin on her face. Her eyes dance with mirth, and Daniel now knows with absolute certainty that Baekho had lied earlier. That Baekho and Sujeong are setting him up. He doesn’t know exactly what their aim is, though. Daniel thinks he might have missed something important a few minutes ago when he had been caught up in the realization that he couldn’t leave Jihoon.

“Depends on which ones you’re talking about,” hedges Daniel. He doesn’t know what Sujeong is referring to, but he does know how to put on a show for the viewers. One glance at the computer screen, and Daniel sees that the live feed is blowing up. This segment is gold. Set up or not, the ratings for his last show will be through the roof.

“Oh, you know, the rumors floating around that you and a certain Jihoon Park don’t quite hate each other as much as the two of you have led on over the years,” says Sujeong nonchalantly.

Daniel freezes, startled, and it takes every ounce of self-control to not openly gawk at his coworker. Sujeong, for her part, continues to smirk at him. The glint in her eyes suggest that this is the bit—that Daniel has walked right into a preset trap. Horror grows in Daniel’s chest. The entire world slows down. It feels like he is watching two trains barrel down the same track toward one another, like he is faced with a real-time catastrophe and he can do nothing except watch it happen.

Jina works her magic behind the scenes then. The images that pop up on the screen before Daniel and for the entire city to see appear a little too quickly for them to not have been chosen beforehand. Daniel’s heart skips a beat in his chest.

The photographs are nothing to write home about at first glance. Grainy, they’re not professionally taken. They look more like something that a teenager with a smartphone might capture in the moment. The angle is awkward, and two of the three images displayed proudly on the screen are a little distorted from shaky camerawork. But there is no mistaking the subject of the photographs. Or, rather, the people.

They’re all photos of Jihoon and Daniel on their date two and a half weeks ago.

Daniel had thought they had managed to be sneaky. That nobody cared enough about his or Jihoon’s personal lives to recognize them in a dimly lit corner of a fancy restaurant. These pictures displayed for the whole city to see—on the Internet for the world to view—prove him wrong.

It almost hurts to look at the photographs. Jihoon looks as devastatingly handsome in the horrible quality image as he had in real life that night. Daniel’s breath catches in his throat at the very sight of him. Daniel knows he should say something right now—knows he should play along with the segment they’ve got going or, more appropriately, shut it down completely before it gets out of hand—but he can’t look away from the pictures.

The thing is that he and Jihoon look happy. They look in love. They look so naively carefree in their secret affections for one another that Daniel wants to reach right into these grainy pictures and shake them both of them and tell them that they’re being idiots. That they’re going to break so horribly within just a few short hours. That they should just talk right then and say I love you before they both get hurt.

It’s almost too much to look at. To see how perfect he and Jihoon go together. To think about how they don’t have a future, but Daniel wants so damn much to fight for one right now.

Vaguely, Daniel notices the smirk fade from Sujeong’s lips. Doubt begins to set into her cheeks instead. She glances helplessly off camera like she doesn’t quite know how to salvage this segment. How to make it go the way it was supposed to. Daniel’s response falls from his lips before he thinks about what he is admitting.

“It’s kind of hard to hate the love of your life, isn’t it?”

There is a collective gasp from everyone in the studio. Sujeong and Baekho both stare wide-eyed at Daniel, unsure of how to proceed or maybe unsure of whether they heard Daniel correctly. Daniel tears his gaze from the photographs still displayed on the screen. He looks beyond the cameras instead to find Seongwoo standing watch in the back of the room. It’s too dark back there for Daniel to really see Seongwoo’s face, to gauge his reaction, but Daniel knows this was Seongwoo’s doing all along. Somehow, though, Daniel doesn’t think this was exactly what Seongwoo had expected to Daniel to give.

Daniel has no regrets. It’s a little scary, his admission, but the idea of leaving Jihoon once and for all is even scarier. Jihoon is the most important person in Daniel’s life. Daniel has learned his lesson about keeping the truth to himself, especially when it comes to Jihoon. He won’t ever do it again. Jihoon is more important than any dignity Daniel might have.

They transition awkwardly into a new segment then since the previous one has done what it was meant to do. This one is more proper, covering the latest news story about a brand new law that is designed to improve the standard of living for impoverished families, especially in crime-ridden neighborhoods. It is the product of one of Songhee Kim’s years-long endeavors. Daniel lets Baekho take the reins. His heart still hurts from the last time he saw Songhee, and he still isn’t comfortable dancing so closely to Roa. His mind is still reeling from his admission regarding Jihoon anyhow.

When nine-thirty finally comes, after what seems like eons, the cameras go down. The lights go up. Daniel starts to pack away Apeach in the drawer before he remembers himself. He winces. He is supposed to be boarding a plane to a brand new city in just a few hours. The crystal penguin feels heavy in his hand. He looks down at it, thinks of Jihoon, and makes a decision. He gently places Apeach in the drawer.

Daniel needs to find Jisung, but he hasn’t seen Jisung all morning. Jisung isn’t in the studio now, either, so Daniel slips out of the room in the rush of activity that always consumes the precious few minutes between shows. He hurries to the elevator, hollering fifteen feet away from it for someone to keep it open for him. Somebody is nice enough to hold their hand in front of the doors so they don’t close. Daniel jogs the rest of the way and climbs onto the lift. He thanks the stranger for his kindness, and he presses the button to Jisung’s floor.

The elevator moves entirely too slow. It stops on every floor between the studio and Jisung’s office. Daniel thinks he could have managed the stairs in half of the time. It’s an exaggeration, probably, because Daniel is impatient to speak with Jisung. He needs to fix his stupid, careless mistake before it’s too late.

The rational part of Daniel’s mind, though, knows it’s probably already too late. That doesn’t stop him from bailing off the elevator the moment the doors split open enough to let him squeeze out. He all but runs to Jisung’s office, caring not for the scene he knows he’s making. When he arrives there, he bursts right inside, ignoring his professionalism. Jisung, seated at his desk, merely looks up at Daniel’s entrance.

“I—”

But Daniel is panting too hard to speak properly. Jisung pushes back the report on his desk and grins his amusement at Daniel’s condition. He motions to the chair in front of his desk, directing Daniel to take a seat. Daniel, face flushed and heart pounding like crazy in his chest, does.

“Never known you to be so eager for our weekly meetings,” comments Jisung. He digs through a stack of papers on the left hand side of his desk. Finding the ones he wants, he slides half of them to Daniel. He picks up a black felt-tipped pen and chews on the end of it as he glances over the first page like he does every single Thursday. “The ratings are sky-high, have been relatively consistently since that auction dinner. Bravo for that. It looks like we’ve got Jaehwan Tomlinson slated for Tuesday. Wednesday is open at the moment, but we’re—”

Daniel, stunned, finally catches his breath.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Jisung glances up at Daniel, his eyebrows raised high on his head. Daniel feels the urge to apologize for his language, because it was rude of him to speak to his boss in such a manner, but he can’t really focus on his manners right now. Jisung is carrying on as if this were any other meeting. As if Daniel will be here come Tuesday. Not as if Daniel is supposed to be in a brand new city in just a few hours. 

“I was commencing our weekly meeting,” says Jisung, his words deliberately slow, “but if you’d rather talk about something else before we begin, I guess we could start there.”

“I’m supposed to start my new job tomorrow,” says Daniel, equally as slow. He feels more confused than he ever has in his life. “I mean, that’s why I ran up here—to see if it was too late to turn down the job.”

Jisung blinks at Daniel. For a long moment, it is silent in the room. Jisung only stares at Daniel, and Daniel stares back. Just like earlier in front of the cameras, Daniel can’t help but to feel like he is missing something. Then, as Daniel is beginning to wonder if maybe Jisung is ever going to say anything, Jisung bellows out a laugh.

“I told Ed yesterday evening that you had decided to stay here. The station cancelled your flight. You’re supposed to be here bright and early at five-fifteen tomorrow morning as usual—or, more for you, I guess, at five-twenty-nine.”

“But—what?” asks Daniel, stunned and unable to say anything else. “I just decided to stay this morning—as in a couple of hours ago.”

Jisung smiles, amused. “Seongwoo told me yesterday morning that you weren’t going to leave. Said something about you realizing that you couldn’t leave Jihoon but you didn’t know how to go about breaking the news to me and Ed. Truthfully, though, Ed and I had already assumed you wouldn’t go through with it, so we already had a replacement picked out just in case.”

“Seongwoo told you?” repeats Daniel. His voice is thin, because his lungs don’t seem to be able to function at their full capacity. His brain has other priorities, such as focusing on the fact that that he might quite possibly kiss Seongwoo full-on the lips the next time he see him.

For the first time all morning—or maybe longer—Daniel feels like a weight has been lifted off his heart. He doesn’t have to leave. More importantly, he has a future with Jihoon… if Jihoon so wants it, and Daniel desperately hopes that Jihoon does. Daniel isn’t quite sure what he will do if Jihoon doesn’t.

“Yep, after your show yesterday morning,” says Jisung, still amused. He lets his statement hang in the air between them for a moment then, when Daniel doesn’t pursue it any longer, he gets back to business. “So, on Thursday, you’re slated to interview Minki. You remember him. He did the photoshoot for the auction promo.”

Daniel does, in fact, remember Minki. He nods his head distractedly. He can’t stop thinking about Jihoon, which in itself isn’t an unusual thing, but, now, he can’t stop thinking about how Jihoon is going to react when Daniel offers him what he’s wanted to offer Jihoon this whole time: a future.

Before then, though, Daniel has to get through this unfortunately long meeting. He finally grabs the papers off the back of Jisung’s desk, and he pretends to follow along. His mind isn’t really on work, though. It’s on Jihoon. Jisung probably suspects as much, as the meeting lasts about half of an hour less than usual before Jisung sends him on his way with strict instructions to be on time for the show tomorrow morning.

Freed, Daniel hardly bothers to attend to the rest of his work duties. There is nothing too important that cannot wait until tomorrow, and he has to see Jihoon now. He takes the elevator straight down to the ground floor. He hails a cab out front, ignoring the paparazzi across the street flashing photographs of him. He wonders what the articles will say about him. Wonders if they’ll hound him for his admission on-air earlier. But he finds, seated in the back of the cab on the way back home to Jihoon, that he doesn’t care.

As long as he can have Jihoon for the rest of forever, Daniel doesn’t care about anything else.

Daniel gets a message about five minutes into the car ride. It’s from Minhyun, a simple come over command that makes Daniel suspect Seongwoo is responsible for keeping tabs on him. Daniel wants to see Jihoon as soon as possible, but, as the cab drives nearer and nearer to his house, he realizes that he doesn’t even know if Jihoon is still there among all of the boxes and reminders that Daniel is leaving or if he has already left for Minhyun’s house.

It has to hurt, Daniel thinks, to stay in a house that is half-packed away, so Daniel redirects the cab driver to Minhyun’s place instead.

When the taxi pulls up outside of Minhyun’s house, Daniel pays the fare and gets out. He lets himself in through the front gate. As he walks up to the front door, he thinks about leaving this place last night feeling like it was the end and about how he had almost turned around three separate times with the urge to have one more hug from his best friend. It seems trivial now, why he had fought so hard to run away from love, but it was an entirely different matter twenty-four hours ago when he thought he was nothing to Jihoon except a bit of fun. When he had thought he was in love with a man who, at the core, still hated him.

Sungwoon answers the door. His skin is a rosy pink, burned by the hot Korean sun. He doesn’t move back to let Daniel in. He stands in the doorway, looking Daniel over. His face is stony, but Daniel had expected as much. Sungwoon is the only person Daniel hasn’t seen since they all arrived back in the city. Sungwoon must have been the one holding Jihoon together when Daniel was too afraid to admit how much Jihoon meant to him. Sungwoon and Jihoon have always been good friends.

“If you break his heart again, I will break your face,” says Sungwoon. His voice is the coldest Daniel has ever heard it, and it sounds all wrong coming from Sungwoon, who is so kind hearted to everybody he meets. “You fucked him up real bad once. I won’t let you do it again.”

Daniel bites back the urge to point out that Jihoon had hurt him, too. Sungwoon’s heart is in the right place. He is just concerned for his friend. Sungwoon and Daniel don’t have nearly the same camaraderie that Sungwoon and Jihoon do. Daniel can’t fault Sungwoon for being protective, especially since the last thing Daniel ever wants to do in his entire life is hurt Jihoon again.

A familiar tune echoes in the house then, chasing after a commercial break. The timing is almost too perfect. Except that it isn’t, not for this pivotal moment. Daniel smiles to himself.

“You saw my show.”

Sungwoon grins. It wavers like it wasn’t a planned reaction, but it is enough of a confirmation for Daniel, who shoulders past Sungwoon into the house. Sungwoon stumbles back at the slightest brush of Daniel’s elbow. The grin remains on his face.

“Recorded it, actually,” quips Sungwoon, friendly with Daniel again now that he has said his warning. “That’s something we’re all going to want to remember forever.”

Daniel nods, smiling himself, and he follows Sungwoon farther into the house. He knows he will certainly never, ever forget how it felt to look into the camera and admit to the entire city that he was in love with Jihoon. Terrifying. Exhilarating. Freeing. 

In the living room, Jungsoo’s show plays on the television. He is learning to dance from a world-class ballerina. It’s all good fun, except that Daniel knows this particular prerecorded segment ends with Jungsoo in the floor, groaning in pain after pirouette gone wrong. Even then, Daniel had laughed his ass off behind camera at the absolute dumbfounded expression on Jungsoo’s face whenever the medics told him his ankle wouldn’t even bruise, that it was only a minor sprain that would stop hurting within a few hours.

The segment is entertaining the second time, too. Daniel hovers in the doorway of the living room watching it for a moment. Everybody else in the room is just as enthralled, except for Seongwoo. He is seated on the couch next to Minhyun, so close that Minhyun is nearly dozing on his shoulder. The proximity is actually needless, as half of the couch is otherwise unoccupied. Even when Sungwoon goes to sit down, he reclaims the arm chair he had presumably vacated. Jonghyun is curled up in the other armchair, his back placed strategically to Seongwoo and Minhyun. Daniel winces, remembering Jonghyun’s confession, and he pretends, for Jonghyun’s sake, that he doesn’t see the way Seongwoo and Minhyun are holding hands.

“Shouldn’t you be on a plane?” asks Seongwoo, drawing Daniel’s attention from Jonghyun to him. If Daniel didn’t already know all of Seongwoo’s scheming, the tone of Seongwoo’s voice belies his guilt. Seongwoo doesn’t even sound regretful. “You know, for your brand new job?”

“You told Jisung yesterday that I wasn’t taking the job,” says Daniel.

“I did,” agrees Seongwoo, grinning proudly and making no attempt whatsoever sound repentant. “And did you take the job?”

Daniel glances toward the television. On the screen Jungsoo is approximately two minutes away from making a bigger fool of himself for the entire city to see. Daniel turns back to Seongwoo.

“You know I didn’t.”

Seongwoo grins even wider. “Knew you wouldn’t from the moment I found out about it, to be honest. ‘Cause you and Jihoon? You’ve never been good at keeping away from one another, even back when you supposedly hated each other.”

Daniel bites his lips together. He knows Seongwoo is correct. He and Jihoon spent years wearing the other one down, crowding into each other’s spaces, searching for the right buttons to push to get the upper hand. They’re no better now without the hate separating them. Daniel’s entire life has been so saturated with Jihoon for so long that he spent two and a half weeks being haunted by the man.

“You’re a scheming bastard, Seongwoo,” says Daniel, because it is the truth.

Seongwoo shrugs the one shoulder that Minhyun isn’t resting against. The movement itself is enough to jostle Minhyun, even though Seongwoo had obviously tried not to. Minhyun draws his attention away from the television screen long enough to smile mischievously up at Daniel like the good friend he is. Daniel vaguely wonders how he thought he’d ever be able to leave Minhyun behind.

“And you’re wasting time,” Minhyun says. “Aren’t you eager to tell the ‘love of your life’ that you’re his forever?”

Daniel blushes, but it is true that he wants to offer Jihoon the world. He wants to do it as soon as possible so that he can kiss Jihoon again and promise Jihoon the future that he couldn’t last night. The future he and Jihoon deserve. The only problem, however, is that Jihoon is nowhere to be seen.

Minhyun, as if reading his mind, laughs and says, “He’s upstairs. Said something about some pesky morning host waking him up before the ass crack of dawn this morning, so he’s taking a nap.”

Daniel hardly waits for Minhyun to finish speaking before he bounds up the stairs. Minhyun and Seongwoo laugh after him, but Daniel thinks that, maybe, they’re laughing at Jungsoo instead, who has just fallen on screen. Either way, Daniel doesn’t care.

Daniel makes it up to the second floor landing in just a few strides. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that he fears it might bruise from the inside out. He can hardly contain himself. He is giddy with anticipation, eager to see Jihoon. To promise Jihoon a future.

He doesn’t know which room Jihoon is in, as Minhyun hadn’t specified, but Daniel has his suspicions. He steps inside the third door on the left-hand side of the hallway. It’s a natural choice, like déjà vu, and Daniel smiles at the sight with which he is rewarded.

Jihoon is seated on the foot of the bed facing the door like he has been waiting for Daniel this whole time instead of sleeping. He doesn’t notice Daniel entrance at first. It is only when the door snaps shut behind Daniel that Jihoon’s gaze darts up. He gasps, surprised and pleased, but he says nothing. The moment settles in around them. He chews on his bottom lip as he stares at Daniel, and Daniel thinks that Jihoon’s eyes might be a little bloodshot red. Jihoon still looks beautiful.

“Is it true?” breathes Jihoon. He draws in a trembling breath. “What you said on-air, did you mean it?”

“Yeah,” says Daniel, immediately, and then, because that seems wholly inadequate for the staggering amount of love that Daniel feels, he adds, “with every fiber of my being and then some. I love you, Jihoon Park. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” says Jihoon, automatically like he can’t bear the thought of Daniel thinking he doesn’t. He is looking at Daniel like Daniel is offering him the most precious gift in the history of mankind. Of the universe. It’s a powerful sort of gaze that nearly brings Daniel to his knees.

“I didn’t take the job,” says Daniel. It’s important that Jihoon knows this. Important that Jihoon realizes how much Daniel loves him. Important that Daniel doesn’t put this off. “I couldn’t—fuck—I thought about leaving you, and I couldn’t do it. I love you too damn much to leave.”

“But you said—”

“I was an idiot too afraid of love to let myself have it,” admits Daniel. There is entirely too much space between Jihoon and him, so he decides to change that. He moves closer to Jihoon until he can’t anymore then falls to his knees in front Jihoon. He has to look up to meet Jihoon’s eyes. “Nobody has ever meant as much to me as you do, and I was terrified of what that meant. But you know what’s scarier?”

Jihoon shakes his head, though the smile that is beginning to make its way on his face suggests that he does, in fact, know what is scarier than the idea of love.

“Losing you,” says Daniel, and he cups Jihoon’s face with both of his hands. He leans up to ghost his lips against Jihoon’s, desperate to kiss him but holding off for just a little longer. “Let me give you forever. Let me love you forever. Let me be yours forever.”

“You already are,” says Jihoon.

He closes the distance between their lips, always the first to break. Daniel gives into the kiss immediately. It’s a hungry sort of kiss, one that neither Jihoon nor Daniel can get enough of. It tastes like a future. Like everything Daniel has ever wanted, and Jihoon kisses Daniel like they’ve got no tomorrow, but they do.

They have forever.


End file.
